


Cop the Wizard

by TheUnrealInsomniac



Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Drabbles, F/M, Flirting, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Oneshot collection, Roleplay, Table Sex, Teasing, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-01-11 02:49:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 37,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18421266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheUnrealInsomniac/pseuds/TheUnrealInsomniac
Summary: A collection of oneshots for Harry and Murphy.





	1. To Shave Or Not To Shave?

**Author's Note:**

> So ... I started rereading The Dresden Files cus my girlfriend is awesome and got me damn near all of them in first edition. Cus she's the best. Best girlfriend. Thank you darling!
> 
> Just a nice little slice of domestic life that all men with facial hair have probably faced at some time. Enjoy!
> 
> For anyone wondering continuity wise ... this is a little after the end of Skin Game.

Harry Dresden frowned at his reflection in the mirror.

Mirrors were a rare thing for him. Too many things could use them as doors through the Nevernever or even just from place to place. As Chicago's only registered wizard and after a slew of noteriety he probably should have done something about that ... leaving your home open to intrusion through something as easy to access as a mirror was unwise.

But he wasn't at his place anymore, hadn't been for weeks really. And the beauty of Karrin's place was that it was protected by the mother of all thresholds. The house being lived in by Murph's grandmother for years and possible countless other Murphy relatives gave the threshold some serious juice.

Nothing but nothing was coming crashing through into this house without losing a serious wedge of power. 

Something he'd had to admit was a relief for him when he'd first moved into Murphy's house.

It had initially only meant to be while his leg was busted from a month or so ago. Getting back and forth from Demonreach to a doctor would have been a pain and with Butter's new job as a Knight of The Cross ... well, the little M.E. had more than enough to be getting on with than to be Harry's on call surgeon.

Normally he'd have looked after it himself instead, getting back to mainland Chicago as and when but that wouldn't have been good enough for Murph. His girlfriend would have been murderous if he'd not taken proper care of himself.

Hells bells, it still felt weird to think of her as his girlfriend. A much goddamned delightful kinda weird but all the same. After years and years of waiting and being careful not to fuck up their friendship, despite him being crazy for her, the truly messed up shit of the past few years had sorta thrown everything into perspective.

So yeah, girlfriend.

And with that relationship came the ability to convince him do even more stuff than she'd already been able to do. Like stay with her so she could make damn sure he looked after himself.

And so they could have sex. Lots of it.

Though truth be told, they'd been unable to do the whole act so to speak. Casts and injuries still healing had gotten in the way, but their mouths and hands had been exceptionally busy over the last few weeks.

And with them both still healing there hadn't been much need to do anything other than hang around, recuperate and use their mouths some more.

Harry grinned at himself in the mirror and scrubbed at his chin through the freshly, post-shower fuzzy beard. He hadn't let it grow out this long in a long time and while he'd still got use of both his arms, he just hadn't cared enough to shave. And Karrin hadn't said anything about it needing gotten rid of so yeah. But it was getting a bit ridiculous now and with their injuries all but recovered ... he'd have to be getting to work again soon.

Working with a beard where hairs, and therefore something to use against him in a nasty magic way, could be tugged out so much more easily was a bad idea. So a shave.

A light knocking came from the bathroom door and Harry jumped as it immediately opened. All five foot nothing of Karrin Murphy appeared, a trace of mischief in her smile as she stared at him.

"Stars and stones Murph!" Harry gasped. He nearly dropped the can of shaving foam into the sink when his hands went to the hem of his towel. "Give a guy some warning when you're about to walk into a room he could be naked in!"

Karrin leaned against the frame of the door and gave him an imperious look. "Dresden, if I want to walk into my bathroom to see you naked I could have done that when you were showering."

"You _do_  do that," Harry said, blushing slightly as the memory of multiple times over the last few weeks when he'd been having a very careful shower and suddenly found a very naked Karrin joining him and starting to ... ahem, clean him.

"Never heard you complaining." Karrin gave him a victorious, knowing smile. He could feel her giving him a satisfied up and down. He may have pushed out his chest a little. Just a little. "Anyway, we need to go shopping. _Again._ Could you hurry up in here?"

Harry smiled slightly to himself. They still weren't used to buying food enough for more than one person at a time. This would be their fourth trip to the supermarket this week.

"Sure Karrin, I'll be right with you. Just need to deal with this thing first." He pointed at his chin and Murphy nodded in realisation.

"You're shaving it off because of the whole using your hair against you thing huh?" Murphy pushed off the frame and moved closer to him. "I wondered if you'd do that soon. Shame, I'll miss it."

Harry raised an eyebrow at her, weighing the shaving foam can in his hand thoughtfully. "You prefer the beardy look Murph? Bit more He-man?"

Murphy shrugged, her smile becoming vulpine as she ran her fingers through his beard, the feel of her touch soothing and exciting all at once. "Not particularly, you look just as goofy as you do when you're clean shaven. There's just some unexpected upsides to you having a bit of a beard."

Well that was interesting, almost tempted him to not lose the beard if it was having some unexpected pluses for Karrin. "Oh? Like what?"

"It tickles," Karrin said, looking at him pointedly. Wickedness gleaming in her eyes.

"It tickles?" Harry repeated. "What when I kiss you? Like on your neck?"

"No," Karrin said simply. Running her fingers down his jaw to his neck, dashing a few droplets of water on the way to the centre of his chest. She reached up to kiss his cheek, her lips lingering after the slow peck, burning a little fire that travelled somewhere beneath his navel. "Not my neck."

It took Harry all of five seconds to puzzle out what Karrin meant, her impish smile helping him along in no uncertain terms. "Oh," he said quietly, going beet red in the process.

Murphy hummed and walked back out the bathroom without another look back. 'Well anyway, hurry up Harry, I want to hit the supermarket before the school run traffic hits. It'll be a nightmare otherwise.'

And then she was gone. Leaving Harry stood there holding a shaving foam can. 

He looked at the can, then at his reflection in the mirror. At his beard and then back at the can.

"Screw it," he grunted and put the can back in the cupboard. He'd shave later. "Murph wait!"

 


	2. BBQ the X

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry has a run in with Murphy's ex when he's invited to a Murphy family BBQ. Pre Small Favor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So full disclosure, I actively despise Rick/Rich. Like I would murder him and while I applaud Jim for not squaring him and Harry up like they're fighting over Murphy ...
> 
> Well, I had to have my fun.

Harry Dresden had found himself in many odd and unexpected situations throughout his rather outlandish life. He’d been fighting beasties that belonged in folktales, and the worst of biblically inspired nightmares, for most of his life and there were definitely some that stuck out above the others.

He’d watched the life bleed out of a Faerie queen under his own hands and ridden through a necromantic storm of ghosts and zombies on the back of a giant reanimated dinosaur.

Harry had seen some _shit_.

But the scenario he was in the middle of right now was so bizarrely mundane that it was far weirder than any of that.

Being apparently sized up by Murphy’s ex, and new brother-in-law in some kind of sick Freudian joke, Rick in Mama Murphy’s kitchen during a family barbecue was just odd. He’d laugh if he didn’t find the whole thing insultingly ridiculous.

And if Murphy wasn’t literally watching him through the kitchen window. He could feel her rich blue eyes drilling into his skull all the way from here, giving him some seriously good reasons to behave.

Given how she was wearing another dress like the one he’d seen her in at the last Murphy reunion, and God not checking out her legs had been an impossible task he’d nearly failed twice when he’d gotten into her car this morning, it was doubly impressive how intimidating she was.

As was that even though she was scowling at him, with enough intensity it put the powerful grills the food was being cooked on to shame, she still looked gobsmackingly gorgeous. He wanted to kiss her so damn badly when she looked at him like that.

Even if said beautiful scowl was entirely unwarranted.

All he’d done was ask Murphy’s mother what he could do to help and winked at Karrin while thanking the matriarch for the invitation. Though he suspected what had really ruffled the petite blonde’s feathers was that he’d guessed her drink properly without needing to be told. Mrs Murphy’s knowing smile could be seen from space when Harry had retrieved a can of beer for Karrin out of the waiting icebox, before promptly opening it and passing it to the already blushing blonde.

Which had only made Karrin blush all the more. It had been adorable. Almost as adorable as the blush she’d had on her cute face when she’d shown up at his place this morning to pick him up. Karrin had been blushing a lot today, all of it adorable.

Not that he’d told her it was adorable. He liked being able to use his tongue. It was the best way to snark off at people trying to scare him.

Like ex-husbands who thought they were somehow intimidating.

‘Problem Rick?’ Harry asked as he scooped up the trays of burger and hotdog buns Mama Murphy had asked him to bring out with one arm, while carrying a crate of beer under the other.

He’d been expecting some kind of confrontation with the man at some point. Call it wizardly intuition but he’d known the prick was going to have an issue with him being there. Whether it was borne of not wanting Karrin to be with someone … even if technically she wasn’t in this case … or just being a douchebag on instinct, they were always going to come to a head.

‘What do you think you’re doing here?’ Rick asked, in what must have been his scariest voice. It didn’t so much as make Harry wince. ‘You’re not family. You don’t belong here.’

‘Well I haven’t married two of the Murphy women, no,’ Harry said, eyeing the FBI agent as his grip tightened around his bottle of beer. Some crappy brand that no one with any sense would put in their body.

Or maybe Harry was just biased after years of Mac’s holy brews.

Though it could be that he didn’t take kindly to being interrogated by some jackass who broke his friend’s heart because he couldn’t accept he wasn’t as good at his job as she was. And that same piece of shit telling him where he did or didn’t belong.

Could be either really. God only knew.

‘But I was invited by Mrs Murphy, so I think,’ Harry continued in a tone like he was talking to a particularly dim five year old. ‘I’m gonna take these outside, and put them where she asks me to.’

Harry lifted the trays like he was asking for permission, not even trying to supress the sarcasm in the gesture, and made his way towards the door that led out into the garden.

But Rick moved to block his way out. Firmly putting his body between Harry and the door.

Harry resisted the urge to snort. It took more effort than it probably should have. For all his many, many failings, Rick was an FBI agent and Harry was not in the habit of dismissing the skills of normal people.

Normal people could do truly amazing things when push came to shove. They were capable of feats that would humble any of the smarter supernatural things that preyed on them.

Not to mention the underlying fact that the supernatural world knew exactly what could happen when normal mortals got into a group. Even more so when they got information out and starting acting on it. Like with Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a basic guide to murdering the Black Court. There was a reason the vampires and demons worked in the shadows after all.

But it was really, really hard not to laugh in Rick’s face as he glared at him.

Especially because the shorter man had to look _up_ at him.

Ah, the advantages of being six foot nine. He didn’t normally feel smug over his luck in genetics but in this case? It would be a filthy lie if Harry said it wasn’t a good feeling to tower over the other man.

But he kept it off his face, he knew everyone outside could still see him if they cared to look. And they couldn’t see Rick. So if shouting started it would only appear like Harry was the angry and unreasonable one. Which might make Mrs Murphy’s surprisingly positive opinion of him drop some and embarrass Karrin.

Neither of which did Harry have any intention of doing. Definitely not just to one up Rick. Because he had a sneaking suspicion that he’d hidden himself on purpose and was about to piss Harry off.

If he told Harry he had better not hurt Karrin, Harry was going to lay him out. And then pray Michael was feeling up to fixing the back wall of Marion’s house pro bono.

‘Yes Rick?’ Harry managed a perfectly polite tone. Honestly, he was proud of himself for it. He’d actually rather put his fist through the prick’s face so it was quite impressive if you asked Harry.

‘It’s Rich asshole,’ Rick snarled. ‘And you’re gonna tell me why you’re here.’

‘Or what smart guy?’ Harry asked, raising his eyebrows but keeping his tone light as possible.

‘You think you’re hot shit don’t you?’ Rick stepped up into Harry’s personal space some more. Pointing his finger in his face. ‘Because Marion likes you and you got invited to a family barbecue. But you aren’t the first man Karrin’s brought home, you ain’t special Dresden. You’re never going to be more important to her than her job. Trust me.’

Rick let that hang in the air for a minute and the silence that followed afterwards was heavy and loaded. There was a lot of real emotion in the absolute crap Rick had just rambled off. It fell somewhere between a warning and a threat if Harry had to guess.

Which was rich, given how from the little Karrin had told him about her marriage to Rick … it wasn’t Karrin who’d been the one letting the marriage fall apart. He’d almost pity the clueless asshole if he wasn’t still glaring at him waiting for a reaction.

Whatever the pompous, self-important asshole had been expecting from Harry, he wasn’t going to get it.

Harry didn’t know what to think about how much Mrs Murphy seemed to approve of him. He didn’t know what to make of the fact that Karrin hadn’t refused to bring him along to a _family_ gathering. That the implication that she was bringing him said a lot more about their relationship than either of them would admit.

He didn’t know what to do with the little ball of happy that had been slowly building in his chest, right along with the nerves, as the realisation that Karrin _must_ have told her mother about him. She had talked about him to her mother and it had gotten around to the rest of the family exactly who he was to Karrin.

Because no one who’d seen him had been anything other than welcoming and friendly. There’d been a few knowing smirks and gentle ribbing of Murphy when they’d gone past one of her brothers and his wife … but no one, not even Lisa, Karrin’s brat of a sister had seemed surprised to see Harry there.

And the pure unadulterated joy on Mrs Murphy’s face at seeing him walk towards her, and then the rib-shattering hug she’d given him, had made Harry feel warm all the way down to his toes.

He was perfectly welcome here, regardless of the truth of his and Karrin’s relationship, and that wasn’t something he was prepared to let some jealous dickhead stamp all over because Rick felt insecure over the idea that someone else could make Murphy happy when he couldn’t.

But he knew one thing.

Rick hadn’t been expecting Harry to laugh.

The other man’s face got red with anger, so red in fact Harry didn’t know human faces actually got that red outside of cartoons.

‘Are you laughing at me?’ Rick asked, outrage spilling over Harry’s face.

Harry just kept laughing, he couldn’t help it. This was funnier than anything he could have possibly imagined Rick saying to him.

He thought he’d be angry. Honestly, he’d expected to be throwing Rick through the window and ruining the barbecue.

But to be what … warned off of getting too attached to Karrin? That was better than any joke any comedian could ever craft.

‘Stop laughing at me asshole, you think I’m scared of you?’

Harry sobered slowly, really slowly, as he heard the door behind Rick open, his eyes too screwed up from his laughter to actually see ahead of him.

His face was starting to hurt as a cool, familiar voice rang like a bell through the kitchen.

‘Harry?’ Murphy asked. ‘You okay?’

The laughter came to a stop, Rick’s red face still in front of him as it started to drain of colour. Murphy stood in the doorway, her impressive glare aimed directly at her ex-husband’s back before she glanced up at Harry.

‘M’fine Murph,’ Harry said, still smiling. ‘Rick here was just offering to help me carry the beer. Like I said Rick, I got it. But thanks for the offer buddy.’

Watching the other man’s face cycle through confusion, comprehension and then mutinous anger was better than anything Harry had seen in years. The only thing that was better was watching Murphy glare at the dickhead on his behalf.

It made him feel fuzzy inside.

‘Is that what’s going on in my mother’s kitchen Rick?’ Murphy asked. Her tone still icily cold. ‘You offering to help Harry with the beer?’

‘Yeah,’ Rick said, barely above a whisper really. It made Harry’s smile grow even bigger. Shit eating levels of big in fact. ‘But he clearly doesn’t need my help. I’m gonna see if I can’t find Lisa.’

‘You do that,’ Karrin said, stepping to the side so Rick could get past her. ‘She’s over watching the kids play soccer with Jennifer.’

Rick grunted, gave Harry one last glare and stomped out into the back garden.

‘You gonna tell me what that was actually about?’ Karrin asked quietly once Rick was out of earshot, still watching his retreating back until he reached his wife.

‘Told you Murph,’ Harry said carefully. ‘He was offering to help me with the beer.’

Murphy looked back at him, a strange expression across her pretty face. Their gaze met briefly, a shock of uncertainty and something Harry couldn’t quite place in her rich blue eyes.

Harry had no doubt that she’d pieced together what had actually gone on. Rick wasn’t subtle and Harry wasn’t living up to the wizardly stereotype on that front either. He never had.

But as long as he didn’t outright say what had happened, Murphy didn’t have to go over and break her ex’s leg in front of her family.

Which, while endlessly satisfying to see, would ruin the mood of the party.

Plus, it’d embarrass Murphy just like him losing his shit on Rick in the kitchen would have done.

‘Well I can see why, you’re holding it wrong. Give me Dresden, you’ll drop it at this rate.’ She took the crate from under his arm and paused as their fingers touched before whipping the crate away from him and walking away stiffly.

Harry watched her go, smiling softly as he caught the occasional grumble about stupid men and their fragile egos. He wasn’t sure if that was aimed at him or Rick but when she turned to look at him expectantly, he followed without asking.

Who said all men were stupid?


	3. Drunk Dial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry never expected to get a drunk dial from Karrin Murphy of all people. Pre Small Favor.

I could hear the phone ringing from down in my lab, the trap door left open to cool down the hotbox I call an apartment.

My lab is in the sub-basement of my basement apartment. It’s dank and cold and in this current summer heatwave it was a godsend. Work tables were along the sides and down the middle, potion ingredients lined the walls on shelves and in little boxes. All except for one shelf, which had paperback romance novels, Victoria Secret catalogues, and a couple articles … ahem … of adult literature. In the middle sat a bleached human skill that housed the air spirit of knowledge who went by the name Bob.

I hadn’t been able to sleep in the heat and while my taking Molly as my student had been rewarding and helped me work on the basics of my magic … keeping on top of Grasshopper had meant some of the little jobs had been left unattended.

Like tending to Little Chicago, the expansive model spread out over one of my work tables. Which I was currently slouched over, reworking energy was a bitch to do, but if I didn’t adjust it properly, Little Chicago would become Little Crater along with my apartment and everything in it.

Which I doubted Mister would appreciate. Or my landlady. Mouse would manage.

I sipped at a blissfully cold can of coke and ignored the continued ringing.

“Phone Harry,” Bob said, his orange pinprick eyes, flashing away from the issue of Playboy he was reading.

Don’t look at me like that. Bob had been very, very well behaved and stayed entirely silent when Molly had been down in the lab in … um … clothing that would make her mother angry and men very happy.

And he’d only done that because I had promised to supply him with a month of Playboys.

I grunted at Bob, not looking away from what I was doing. Let it ring, I was finally working on the model again, it needed doing. Besides, whoever was calling me was being ruder in calling than I was in ignoring them. It was well after midnight. They could hang.

“So maybe,” Bob said idly, his eyes already having gone back to his magazine, a well-loved page flipping over as he hollered his excitement as undoubtedly scantily-clad women met his gaze. “You should go answer it?”

I grunted again. “If it’s important, they’ll leave a message. It’s probably just Molly with another question.”

“Then you should definitely answer it,” Bob said, innocence attempted and missed by a mile, as he paused in flipping another page. “Then you could invite her over and instruct her on her … formulae. You know, down here.”

“I’ll burn the magazines Bob,” I warned dangerously, turning on my stool to point at him with a warning finger. “Test me.”

“Ugh, fine,” Bob sighed in frustration. “You should still go answer it, it’s distracting me.”

I rolled my eyes and glanced down at the model building I’d been siphoning energy off of. I sighed, if it was Molly, I was going to make her do laps around Wrigley Field for interrupting me.

I stepped up into my living room slash kitchen and the heat hit me instantly. It was very much like stepping out of those big industrial freezers at a supermarket and into a roasting hot sauna. My Led Zeppelin t-shirt clung to me almost instantly and my loosest fitting boxers joined them shortly after.

 _Great_. Molly’s laps had now just been joined by me throwing things at her too.

The phone was still ringing, growing somehow more insistent the longer it went on, and I scooped it up already pinching my nose.

“Molly, whatever you want to ask can wait until the morn-”

“I’m not Molly,” Karrin Murphy’s voice cut me off, irritation and confusion swimming down the line. “She’s far too tall and leggy. It’s me Harry.”

“Murph?” I asked, before glancing at the Mickey Mouse watch on my wrist. “It’s after two in the morning are you okay?”

“M’fine Harry,” Karrin said, well more liked slurred but that could just be the line. Wizards and phones don’t mix well and especially grumpy, suffering from heatstroke wizards. “I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Uh huh,” I said. “So let’s talk, where are you?”

Because if the line wasn’t bugging out, which it had to be right? I’d had a drink with Karrin a few times, especially after cracking a particularly tough case or to commiserate over something ridiculous. So I knew what she sounded like a little drunk and that wasn’t what she sounded like right now.

Murphy sounded wasted.

Which put me immediately on edge. So I really hoped it was just the line and my magic misbehaving together.

“I’m at a bar …”

Fuck.

“You wanna join me?” Karrin asked, the hopeful lilt in her voice caused something in me to throb achingly.

Murph was asking me out for a drink.

No. _Drunk_ Murph was. Simmer down Dresden. Just go get her, get her home and then try not to tease her about this too badly tomorrow.

“Sure Murph,” I said, keeping my tone light. “Which bar you at?”

“Wait seriously? Great! It’s …”

Murphy named the bar she was at, a mercifully close one, and with a couple of assurances I was on my way, I slipped on a pair of jeans and was lumbering into the Blue Beetle at speed.

Karrin Murphy had drunk dialled me, in the early hours of morning, from a bar, and invited me to get a drink.

Hells bells.

Even this late at night, the traffic wasn’t smooth and it took me a little longer than I’d have liked for me to get to the bar. I paid the gouging prices of parking in the city and bounded out towards the lit up bar front. Striding through the nightlife of summer in Chicago.

All around me drunken revellers were losing their lunch in the drains and women barely out of college, and barely in their clothes, wolf-whistled in what I assumed was my general direction but I didn’t stop to check.

The bouncer on the door, a big beefy guy sans a neck, gave me a measured look as I approached. “Sorry buddy, bars closing.”

“Not a problem, I’m just here to collect someone, can I go in?”

“Sure you are pal,” the big bouncer said, his eyes scanning over a group of men scowling back at the bar. “You’ll have to wait out here for them.”

He moved slightly, muscles tensed and he looked bigger now. I shouted down the part of my brain that forgets high school was decades ago and sighed.

“Look man, I got a drunk dial from a friend of mine, I’m not sure what state she’s in. Can I just go get her?” I kept my tone low, conspiratorially almost and shrugged my shoulders good-naturedly. “I know you’re just doing your job but come on, she woke me up, I’m worried.”

He looked at me searchingly, sizing me up and searching for the lie. I didn’t blame him, I was probably not even the tenth person tonight he’d had to deal with begging to be let in tonight alone.

Thankfully for me, I’m a terrible liar and I gave him my most earnest smile.

“You get her, you come right back out,” he half-whispered. “No dawdling or you’ll wind up on your ass in front of your girl.”

It was just the humidity in the air that made my face heat up as I thanked him and dove into the bar proper. That was all, definitely wasn’t because he thought I was here for my girl.

Because Murphy wasn’t my girl.

Ugh. Why did I feel like my night wasn’t going to get better soon?

Unoccupied staff glared at me as I came into the main room of the bar.

It was clearly going through its last call as the bouncer had warned me. Other bouncers were nudging the more inebriated patrons to finish their drinks and leave, and only a couple of people were still standing at the bar.

One such people was sat on her bar stool, her classily low cut black blouse complimenting her tight white jeans. A tasteful amount of make-up on her face and lipstick only a shade darker than her natural lip colour drawing my eyes. She lifted her drink to her lips and drained the remaining contents in a quick gulp and then she pouted into nothingness.

Stars and stones, how could Karrin make pouting look simultaneously adorable and sexy as hell?

I didn’t have much time to muddle that out though as Murphy’s gaze turned to me and I was suddenly thrust into the sun as her pout turned into a radiant smile.

“Harry!” she said loudly, making some of the bar staff turn to look at us. A look of relief flashing across a woman with alabaster skin and dark hair in a messy bun’s face. “You came!”

_Not yet, but if you play your cards right …_

I stamped that thought down hard. I’d be having a word with my id later probably. I was looking forward to it this time. I was going to enjoy snapping his neck under my boot.

Murph bounded up to me with semi-drunken grace. I wasn’t too surprised by the level of control she had over her movements even when she was obviously off her face.

You work as the boss of a bunch of Chicago cops, you learn how to hold your drink. As I’d found out to my detriment one too many times at Mac’s.

“Of course Murph,” I said as Karrin came to a stop before me. I definitely wasn’t enjoying the view of her creamy cleavage that my height advantage afforded me. I was here as a friend, not a lecherous pervert. “You okay?”

Murphy nodded enthusiastically and beamed at me. “They’re kicking out, but I want to keep drinking. But I don’t want to drink alone anymore, you want to move on to the next place with me?”

Was it wrong that part of me actually did want to? I could do with the stress relief of a night out with Murphy and I was certain we could find a bar that was still open.

But as I looked into Murphy’s eyes, long enough to risk a soulgaze, I sighed. She didn’t need more alcohol, she was going to feel rough enough as it was in the morning. Not to mention how mortified she’d feel when she remembered she’d drunk dialled me. “Let’s just get out of here first yeah? You got your keys?”

Karrin patted her jean pockets and beamed. “Yup, but I don’t think I should drive Harry, I’m definitely over the limit. Let’s take your car.”

Well at least she wasn’t _that_ far gone.

“Alright Murph, let’s go.”

“Hold on,” she said, tugging on my arm.

I didn’t freeze in place so much, but it did feel really nice for her soft hand to wrap around the warm skin of my arm. So I sorta stood stock still.

Look, it’s been a while alright?

Karrin turned, hand still around my wrist, and placed her empty glass on a nearby table. Then she looped her arm around mine and let me escort her out.

I’m not going to wax poetical about how warm and fuzzy that made me feel, especially when she leant against me when we got out into the night air and it was somehow even hotter than it had been outside.

Mostly because I don’t think I could have talked when her entire chest was mushed up against my arm.

Stars and stones that had felt way too nice and I should feel awfully guilty as Karrin’s fingers massaged around my wrist and up my arm.

“Whoa,” Karrin said as she rubbed at her forehead. “It’s hot huh Harry?”

I bit down on the inside of my cheek, lest the joke on the tip of my tongue bounce out. She curled her whole arm around mine and my traitorous brain thought about how my hand would feel wrapped around something a lot softer of hers.

Bad Harry, down Harry, I mentally screamed as I nodded my thanks at the bouncer from before. Who was hiding a smirk. Poorly.

We reached my car pretty quickly given how the fresh air was hitting Karrin pretty hard and I guided her into the passenger seat without touching something I shouldn’t without much fuss.

I got myself into the driver’s seat just in time to see Karrin trying and failing to fasten her seatbelt. It slipped out of her fumbling fingers and slapped back to the side by the door.

“Stupid thing,” Karrin grumbled under her breath, giving it up as a bad job and slamming her back into the seat with a growl. The motion and sweat slicked top, brought the definition of her breasts to the forefront of my attention and I growled in the back of my throat.

Mercifully, Karrin was too drunk to notice, and crossed her arms over her chest as she glared at the seatbelt in indignant outrage. She was just grabbing it again when I came back to my senses.

“Hold on Murph,” I said huskily, which I really couldn’t tell you where that came from. I put my hand over hers as she was pulling it half over her stomach.

Her fingers froze as I eased the strap out of her grasp, my bent over position bringing our faces close enough that I could smell the whisky on her breath. She wet her lips with her tongue and her cheeks bloomed as our noses almost touched.

Her hair was mussed over her forehead and it gave her a pulse quickening intensity when she stared at me. Her beautiful blue eyes exceptionally wide and captivating. “Thanks Harry.”

The tone of her voice made something beneath my navel throb. It was a really hot night did I mention?

I grunted, because I didn’t trust my mouth and pulled the seatbelt across the rest of her and managed to only brush her thigh a little as I fastened her in.

“Harry?” She asked, while I was staring out into the night, kicking my car into gear. The Blue Beetle whined a little but my loyal steed went trundling along without any more of a complaint. Small mercies.

“Yeah?” I asked, trying to hide how much I liked the sound of her voice right now.

“I don’t want another drink anymore,” she said quietly, I could feel her eyes burning a hole through my temple with their intensity and I swallowed thickly. “Can you take me home?”

My id chuckled smugly in the back of my head and I snarled him into silence.

“Sure Murph,” I said with a smile that I mostly meant. “Why were you out at a bar on your own anyway? That’s not like you.”

I glanced at the woman in my passenger seat and frowned when she turned away from me.

“I needed to let my hair down a little,” she said defensively. “I’m allowed to do that aren’t I?”

Uh oh, Karrin had moved from silly drunk to aggressive and sad drunk. Best to tread carefully.

“Course, but that normally means you going to the shooting range and unloading a clip or two into a paper target. Or throwing a few guys around the mats at the gym. Not uh …” I let my eyes wander over her and averted them back to the road before she caught me. “Drinking in a student bar alone.”

The silence could have suffocated me as I turned a few corners and Murphy’s gaze burrowed into my skull some more.

“Lisa and Rick sent me a wedding invitation.”

I almost missed it she said it so quiet. I gripped the steering wheel tighter and nodded. “Ah. When is it?”

“Same date we got married on,” Murphy said venomously. “Spiteful bastard did it on purpose. Or she did. I don’t know which is worse.”

I don’t make a habit of assuming the worst of people but those two … well I would be lying if I said I’d hadn’t thought the same thing. Rick was a petty little boy of a man and Karrin’s baby sister had some serious growing up to do for a woman already in her twenties.

“I’m sorry Karrin,” I said, reaching over to squeeze one of her hands. My large hand wrapping all around her smaller one. I focused on the clammy, sweaty feel and not how right it felt to touch her so gently. “Anything I can do?”

Karrin kept hold of my hand and shook her head. “No it’s okay. Just – it sucks you know?”

“Yeah,” I said with a soft smile. Because I did know.

“Want I should make ‘im sleep with the fishes Murph?” I asked with an exaggerated criminal accent. “I know a guy who can fit ‘im some concrete slippers.”

“Dork,” Karrin giggled at me. It was a good giggle, I could stand to hear it some more. “I think we’d be the first suspects, best not to. Groom’s ex and her … friend would be who I’d investigate first.”

I artfully ignored her pause, and smiled at her some more. She mirrored it and it, like her giggle, was lovely and warm.

“If you’re sure. Well let’s get you home,” I said, very aware that Karrin was still holding my hand in hers. I squeezed her fingers and didn’t try to move away. If she needed to touch me for a little while longer, I could live with that.

I could live with a lot of that.

We made the rest of the trip to her house in mostly comfortable silence. The heat wasn’t the only thing keeping us from complete ease though. I could _feel_ that Karrin had something she wanted to say but I knew better than to push.

She might be sobering up but the colour in her cheeks told me she wasn’t there yet and any ideas about teasing her had been shot and buried once she told me about Rick and her sister’s wedding date.

You don’t mess with that sort of vulnerability. You just don’t.

We pulled up in front of the quaint little house that Murphy’s grandmother had left her and settled in front of it for a long moment.

“Well, here we are Murph, home sweet home.” I looked over at the house, eyes flitting over the neighbours” houses and the street. All quiet and peaceful. It was nice. Somewhere you wanted to live. “Come on, let’s get you to the door.”

She grunted, her gaze locked onto me and she gestured to her clasp of her seatbelt. “Do you mind?”

I chuckled. “Whatever you need your worship.”

Her cheeks reddened and she swatted at my arm. “Just get your stupid seatbelt off me Dresden.”

Ah surnames, Murph was definitely getting back to sobriety.

I did, the safety measure rattling back in its handle, and got out of the car. I was around to the passenger seat, helping Murphy out of the car.

She took my hand with a grumble and I did a much better job of not looking down her top this time as she stepped out of the car.

She clung to me as we walked to her door in hushed silence. Some of Murph’s neighbours are elderly, and some of them are nosy. She wouldn’t thank me for getting her caught bringing a man back to her place at this time of night.

“Hold on,” I murmured into her ear as she rattled around her purse looking for her keys, grumbling and snarling as she failed to find them over and over. 

She shuddered lightly, looking up at me owlishly, and watched me draw out my keys and ease my key into her front door.

“Oh,” she said softly. “That’s right, you have a key.”

“Mhmm,” I said quietly. “You okay from here Murph or do you need me to help you to bed?”

She looked at me steadily, stepping towards her open door and looking for the joke in my face. It helped I was being quite sincere and not just trying to break the tension I’d been feeling since we went silent in the car with a bad joke.

“I’ll be alright,” Karrin said, her tone still soft. “Thanks for coming to get me Harry. I … I’m sorry if I interrupted something.”

Her big blue eyes ran over my face as I smiled easily. “Nah, I was just tinkering with something. No sweat Murph, don’t feel like you can’t call me when you need me. Even if it isn’t world ending. No need to thank me.”

“But I want to,” she said under her breath. Her fingers reached out to my hand and her nails scratched over the back of my hand. “Harry?”

Her fingers slipped into mine and my breathing hitched as her eyes turned intense again. “Yeah Karrin?”

She stepped into my space, her hand pulling my arm down and the other wrapping around the collar of my t-shirt and her lips glided onto mine.

I stiffened momentarily, I hadn’t been expecting that at all, but I soon overcame my reaction as Karrin’s soft lips nibbled into mine. They were lovely, warm and soft and opening over mine, urging mine to do the same.

They did.

She let out a little whimper and her hand wrapped around my neck, heated palm to my neck and I felt her tongue slip over my lower lip. We kissed languidly, my hand going to the small of her back and up into her hair.

She went to melt against me and something in my head screamed at me. I broke the kiss and struggled to catch my breath as Karrin did the same.

“Harry?” she asked as our foreheads leant against each other. “Why’d you stop?”

“You’re drunk Karrin,”I whispered. “I … I can’t.”

Her small hands cupped my face, her thumbs rubbing over my cheeks and she sighed. She placed soft little kisses along the length of my jaw, her fingers massaging my face and running through my hair. “I’m just saying thank you. Come inside so I can thank you some more.”

My glands begged me to find out if the image in my head could be anywhere near as good as what she was offering.

Dragging myself away from her mouth, I put some space between us. “Still Murph, you’ve had a lot to drink. I don’t want to be the kind of guy to take advantage of a woman when she’s upset and drunk.”

And I didn’t want our first time to be a drunken mistake …

She somehow sensed what I was saying, her eyes running the length of me and sighed wistfully. “You’re an annoyingly good man, you know that?”

I laughed. “You can’t read my mind, I’m not exactly saintly up there.”

Murph hummed smugly, her eyes lowering to my crotch. Said part of my body throbbing at the attention. “Or lower down apparently.”

I blushed and she smirked at me.

“Karrin,” I said. Reaching out to squeeze her arm. “Not like this okay?”

Her eyes sparkled, pinning me in place.

We stood staring at each other for a long moment before her hand reached out to mine and squeezed it gently. “No, not like this.”

I sighed in relief and ignored my protesting glands. “I better get going Karrin, it’s late.”

“Yeah, probably best.” Murphy nodded at me. “Because you turning me down when I’m drunk and vulnerable is making me want to drag you to my bedroom and reward you. Neither of us want that.”

I gulped, the assurance in her voice that she could entirely drag me to her bedroom and I couldn’t stop her making goosebumps shudder all the way up my neck to my scalp.

As did the sarcasm in that last sentence. I swore I saw her wink at me when she did that too.

“Yeah,” I coughed, clearing my throat as I went to turn back to my car. “Night Murph.”

I was already walking down the path back to my car when she called after me.

“Harry?”

“Yeah?” I asked turning around.

She grinned knowingly at me and did wink this time. “Maybe next time.”

Karrin left me standing on the path with my jaw buried into the ground. I could almost hear her giggling from inside her house.

I was still thinking about that wink as I threw myself into the cold water of my shower.


	4. Ships in the Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murphy calls Harry out for a case as she has done many times before. She doesn't normally have to worry about interrupting anything, but this time ... Post Small Favor. Pre Turn Coat

Murphy swallowed a smile as Harry limped his way towards her, a thunderous scowl on his face that was probably meant to be frightening or intimidating. Especially as he clearly still had bedhead and his eyes seemed to be almost slit-like with how closed they were.

She must have woken him up. Though he hadn’t sounded like he’d been sleeping before she called …

“Dresden,” Murphy said with a practiced neutrality. Her eyes running over him as she swallowed another involuntary smile. Letting out a hiccough of a laugh that she smothered just as quickly. “Thanks for getting here so fast.”

“S’fine,” Harry said. “Wasn’t doing anything important anyway. What we got?”

Murphy took another look at him, taking in more details now he was closer, like one of his two different shoes’ laces being untied, his shirt buttons mismatching and the zip of his jeans was only halfway done up. She sighed at him and did her best not to put her hands on her hips. “Harry, are you okay?”

Dresden grumbled something sarcastic in the back of his throat, half Murphy couldn’t catch and the other she decidedly ignored.

She _must_ have interrupted something. It couldn’t have just been his sleeping pattern, it wasn’t that late in the night and Harry had come out on a call out at even later times than this one. He shouldn’t be this grumpy.

Murphy took a sniff and gave him a third look over.

This time she caught the distinct smell of a woman’s perfume and she was certain she could see a hickey half-hidden under his shirt collar when he pulled at it.

A rush of jealousy ran through her. Who the hell was giving her wizard hickeys and why didn’t she know about it?

Wait … _her_ wizard?

Murphy mentally shook herself and sighed. She wasn’t allowed to get jealous because Harry had female company. He could date whoever he wanted, kiss whoever he wanted and … though a fresh surge of hypocritical jealousy ran through her at the thought … Harry could fuck whoever he wanted.

It wasn’t like she hadn’t been sleeping with Jared on an ‘itch scratching’ basis, for a year before they’d ended it. And the places _he_ had left hickeys weren’t anywhere near as visible as the one on Harry’s neck.

Did Harry leave hickeys? He didn’t seem the type to do it on purpose but she had wondered more and more about just how passionate Harry would get in bed. Given how fully she’d seen him do everything else in his life she had guessed it was very.

A large part of her longed to find out just _where_ Harry might leave accidental hickeys.

She shivered pleasantly at the thought and thanked God it was a windy night. Now wasn’t the time to be fantasising about her best friend and his lips.

Besides, he had clearly been with someone when she rang, she’d thought at the time she was hearing things but there had definitely been another voice.

“I’m fine,” he said, loud enough for her to hear properly this time. “You called, I came as fast as I could. What do you need that was so damn important you couldn’t tell me over the phone? Or in the morning,” he whispered more to himself, a slight blush creeping up his neck.

She raised an eyebrow at that.

She’d definitely interrupted _something_ then. A small part of her felt a vindictive little bit of satisfaction and she hated herself for it. It wasn’t fair to him given how upfront he’d been about Jared.

Harry had made his feelings about her and Kincaid clear. He also didn’t hammer on about it. They’d had a painful discussion about where they stood and honestly, she would be lying if she said she’d never wondered if she’d been thinking too long term in regards to what could be.

Sure, Harry could live for hundreds of years, still look and be fit and able while she was going grey and stiff. And she’d die long before he did and it would hurt him so badly and she wanted nothing more than to keep more pain from his already hard life …

But what about in the short term? They would be happy right? She always felt better when he was around. He made her laugh, he had her back and when the bad times had come … he’d always been there.

Besides, with the way she and Harry led their lives, well differing expected lifespans were only a worry if you lived long enough for it to reach that point.

And all she really wanted from a partner was what she already had with Harry. Once you got past the physical side of it … which she couldn’t seem to stop thinking about when it came to Harry lately … the taste of him had stuck to her lips for weeks after that kiss before they’d gone to save Molly.

She could still remember the feel of them if she tried hard enough.

Her and Kincaid hadn’t lasted much longer after that.

It had felt too creepy to be thinking about her best friend while she and Jared were in bed. About how different it would be with Harry there instead. How would Harry kiss her? Would he be gentler or like in a toe-curling daydream she’d had … would he be rougher?

What would he sound like during? Would he be more vocal or would she have to coax each moan past his lips until he couldn’t stop himself?

She liked the idea of the latter one too much to let herself linger on it. Otherwise she ran the risk of calling out the wrong name out in bed. Thank God Jared hadn’t really been listening to her.

Jarry? Really?

Life was complicated enough, she didn’t need to throw shouting out another man’s name in bed while with her itch scratcher into the mix.

Kincaid had taken her calling time on them in stride, fixed her with one of his knowing looks that shot right through her and left her feeling a little cold, and shrugged it off.

It had been so weird to see him last year when everything with the Denarians had gone down. Seeing him with Ivy had made some very complex emotions rise and while it hurt to see him in pain like that … it had solidified one thing for her that she’d known going in.

Kincaid had not been long term, his first priority would always be Ivy and the longer she let things with him go on … the worse it would be to bring about the inevitable end.

Especially if she started calling out for another man.

“Murphy,” Harry said, his previously grumpy tone softening just a little. “You still with me?”

She should’ve been with him years ago.

Dragging herself back to reality, Murphy sighed at her abysmal goddamn timing.

And at her arrogance.

Harry was a good, funny, intelligent, sweet and unbeknownst to him, thank merciful God, an incredibly sexy man. Without even trying. She’d lost count of the times he’d left her gaping without ever noticing.

Of course he’d find someone who’d notice all of those things about him. And they had, unlike her, apparently done something about it. As opposed to sitting on their ass and shacking up with someone who wasn’t him. Because it had been less scary and less risky.

Because Harry’s feeling for her, which he’d also been quite open about, damn him, had terrified her. Because she knew that if she’d said yes to exploring their feelings back then … they’d probably be years deep into a happy relationship by now. The kind neither of them could ever even dream of being in.

Because he would literally have come running if she’d called.

Like he always did. Like he did tonight … with the scent of another woman still on his skin and clothes.

A rock settled in her stomach and her eyes zeroed in on the hickey on his neck and she swallowed the urge to hunt down the lucky bitch who’d put it there and stamp her into paste.

“Sorry Dresden, didn’t mean to interrupt whatever you were up to,” she kept her tone that same neutral from before. It was harder to do though. “Next time I’ll leave it.”

“I – I told you I wasn’t doing anything important. What’s the problem?” He stammered over the lie and she loved him for trying to spare her feelings. She’d have loved him a little more if he’d just been honest though. Or a better liar.

It would have hurt less.

Turning towards the building she’d asked him to meet her at, Murphy scowled.

“Got a weird situation up on the top floor. Wanted your opinion on it, you alright to work pro bono for this one?”

Harry sighed, she could feel his exaggerated breath on her neck. It was apparently a very cold and windy night.

“Sure Murph, whatever you need.”

What she needed was him. But apparently she couldn’t have that. Why had she waited so long to realise that no one else would be enough? No one else was going to fill the oversized, stork limbed hole in her heart that was Harry Dresden.

Murphy ground her teeth at the horrible truth of it all.

“Elevators out, we’ll have to take the stairs.” She looked back over her shoulder at him and swallowed hard at his soft expression and infinitely kissable lips bent into a concerned frown. “Try not to burn this one down while we’re still inside okay?”

Harry scowled good-naturedly and it made her stomach flip-flop.

“Do my best,” he said and gestured for her to lead the way.

He always did. Damn him.

They were walking towards the stairwell before she managed to find the courage to just ask what she wanted to know. How much could it hurt to actually know that Harry was happy?

And whoever it was had best be making him happy. If she was another Susan, Murphy was going to go biblical on the bitch’s hickey leaving ass.

Oh God, it wasn’t Susan was it?

“What were you doing when I rang anyway?” Murphy asked. “You sounded out of breath.”

He hadn’t, he sounded asleep. But Harry had no poker face.

She turned to eye him and true to her expectations, Harry’s face was neon red. It was cute. It was something she’d love to see more of … preferably from many angles.

“Nothing,” Harry said as he drew level with her. “You know, sleeping.”

They hit the stairs, Murphy desperately trying to ignore the knots in her stomach as Harry continued to lie. Really badly too.

“I might have been having a bad dream when you woke me?” He tried, pulling at his collar again. “I can have some pretty intense ones.”

“Real screamers huh?” Murphy asked coolly. Which she knew wasn’t fair, but she didn’t really care right now.

He spluttered and cleared his throat. “Yeah, something like that.”

“So you were sleeping,” Murphy said, looking at him sideways on. “Alone?”

He spluttered again. She’d really have to teach him how to manage his poker face at this rate.

Though … he’d gotten pretty good at lying back when he first got made into a Warden. She’d seen it. It’d been unsettling. But he was being absolutely terrible at it right now.

Why? Was it because it was lying to her?

Her heart lurched at the implications of that and she forced it into a sleeper hold.

“Of course,” Harry said, his voice an octave or two too high. “Who would want to share a bed with me Murph?”

_Me._

The sheer force behind the thought, along with the immediacy of it, knocking her into silence for a flight of stairs. And be damned if that was something anything was going to do to Karrin Murphy.

“Harry,” Murphy said quietly as they reached the door that led out to the floor their evening’s weirdness was living on. “You don’t have to tell me who it is, that’s none of my business. But please stop lying to me. I can smell her perfume on you and you clearly dressed quickly and in the dark. You’re wearing two different shoes for God’s sake. We’re friends Harry, treat me like one.”

Harry’s look was pained. Which she could sympathise with. Just thinking about him with someone else was like a knife in the gut. The fact that she had no right to that kind of jealousy was just the extra twist that came with it.

“Karrin …” Harry started and then he sighed. He took a deep breath and he fixed her with a killer stare that almost made her knees wobble. Almost. “I was with Anastasia when you rang. And that might happen again, but whenever you need me, I’ll always be there. That isn’t going to change.”

Wobbly knees were becoming a continuing thing apparently as that killer stare softened into kindness and Murphy wanted to crawl into a ball and cry about how unfair it was.

“Luccio?” Murphy asked, the irony of him being with a woman who was the leader of what were essentially wizard cops not lost on her. “Captain Luccio?”

He nodded a little sheepishly. “Yeah, it started after the mess on the island.”

Of course it did. She kicked herself for telling him she didn’t think Luccio was right for him. It had probably been like telling a child not to do something. They were going to do it even more because you told them not to.

But Harry hadn’t told her about it, why?

“Look Murph,” he said. The stubborn set of his jaw making her smile reflexively. “I know what you said, and I get you’re only looking out for me. But I like Anastasia, I really do. And she likes me, and star and stones it feels so goddamned high school but I just ... she makes me happy Karrin.”

He looked at her, his dark eyes pleading and filled with remorse. It made her want to hug him and tell him it was okay.

“You deserve to be happy, Harry,” she said gently. “You don’t have to do what I say all the time.”

“I know,” he said. Though he didn’t sound convinced and Murphy bit down a watery laugh. “But I don’t want this to be a thing between us.”

“Which is why you lied,” Murphy said, her throat feeling like razorblades as the words bled from her. “You thought it’d affect our friendship didn’t you?”

Harry shrugged, looking away from her and it ached to see him looking so guilty.

Why did he have to be such a good man?

“Idiot. Why would you ignoring my advice wreck anything now?” Murphy asked, her throat feeling tighter than a constrictor knot. “It hasn’t yet. Now come on, let’s go see to this weirdness and let you get back to Luccio.”

“Right,” he said softly. “After you Karrin.”

They stepped through the door, Murphy leading the way. Thanking God for his chivalrous streak.

It was easier to swallow the resentment and regret without having to look at his relieved face.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooo, you know that gotta hurt. Btw, I have always had a bit of a soft spot for Harry/Luccio, it kinda gets wrecked when you reach the end of Turn Coat but still ... I liked it.


	5. Revealing Relevations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas drops in on Harry one morning and gets an eyeful. Post Skin Game.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, me and my brain have been at odds lately but I would be lying if I didn't love it when it throws this shit at me randomly.
> 
> The things that come to you when you're walking to the shops I swear.

Thomas turned the key in his brother’s front door, the lock clicking open as he allowed himself past the last, most normal protection his paranoid little brother had for his home.

Though he supposed when you were the only resident wizard in Chicago, a Chicago currently under a long running attack by hungry supernatural factions trying to fill the vacuum of power left by The Red Court … while you were also the Winter Knight and had recently just gotten one over on a two millennia old psychopath with a fallen angel in his head …

Yeah, maybe paranoid was a bit harsh.

Besides, like with his old place, Harry had given him a key both the front door _and_ his wards.

Which he’d felt much more powerfully than the old ones now he thought about it. Much, much more powerful come to think.

He’d always been able to sense a low level hum on the old wards. Like the sound of a boiler running in the next room, but these ones … either Harry had been pouring some Mab-sponsored magic into his wards or the threshold was stronger on the bungalow.

Because thresholds were what you had to build the wards on. And like with the foundations of a house, if that base was strong, whatever you built on it would be all the better for it.

Definitely something to ask Harry about then. Later though. He’d promised Justine he’d be back once he’d checked in on Harry after going the store. And while he loved his brother, you didn’t leave your pregnant girlfriend alone for the amount of time his little brother could waffle about magic for. Especially when said girlfriend had sent you out on a craving run.

It had been bad enough when Thomas had helped him move in to this new place.  Harry had been able to afford it with a little help from the insurance on his old place and his share of the diamonds from the heist months ago.

It wasn’t a mansion by any account but in comparison to what Harry had been living in before … it was The Ritz. The two bedroom home had a master bed for Harry and a guest room for when Maggie stayed over, the munchkin still needed the protection of the Carpenter home but apparently Harry was working on that.

Then there was the usual living room, kitchen, bathroom, storage cupboards and a study set aside that had become Harry’s new lab. Which his giant of a little brother had gone on about in almost as much loving detail as people did their kids. Harry included. The things Thomas now knew about his brother’s wizard lab were probably enough Thomas could teach a class on newbie wizards.

He was such a nerd honestly. No wonder he was having such a problem sealing the deal with Murphy. Though he supposed he couldn’t blame that entirely on Harry …

Thomas paused mid-thought as he stepped into the living room and the sound of running footsteps and a girlish shriek reached his ears.

Was Maggie over? Harry hadn’t said anything, he’d promised Thomas would get to spend more time with the munchkin! Oh he was going to give his brother hell for this one. How was he supposed to be cool Uncle Thomas if he didn’t get to bond with his niece?!

The footsteps got closer and Thomas grinned expectantly towards the door that led to the rest of the house and when Maggie came running around the corner his whole being froze.

Because it wasn’t Maggie.

It was Murphy. The other most important woman in his brother’s life.

And she was wearing a particularly interesting choice of clothes.

Namely, one of Harry’s geeky t-shirts.

And nothing else.

The words “Do or do not, there is no try” emblazoned across the chest … the t-shirt not baggy enough to hide Karrin’s current state of enjoyment. It fell off her shoulder to reveal hickeys covering her chest and neck, the hem of the shirt settled somewhere around her thigh. Her impressive legs on full display as Karrin looked back over her shoulder, her cheeks flushed and stretched in the kind of smile that you didn’t find outside of the bedroom.

That was until she turned to look towards him and the smile melted away, her mouth falling open and her cheeks flushing nearly as red as the marks on her skin.

Her gemstone blue eyes seared into him, a whirlwind of emotions that Thomas couldn’t even begin to decipher as he took in the rest of her. Her blonde hair was tousled, clearly having had large hands running through it, the tips at her neck slightly darker as they clung to her heated skin, her face and neck glistening.

Thomas knew exactly what that look meant. He’d seen more than his fair share of women in similar states. He’d caused most of them. Empty night let this mean what he thought it meant.

That what he’d been trying to nudge into reality for years, for damn _years_ , had _finally_ happened. He was gonna gloat so goddamned much. He was gonna brag about this for decades.

Murphy opened her mouth to offer whatever excuse or accusation she’d been able to throw together in her rattled mind. It didn’t matter what she said, he knew what he’d walked in on and he felt his face stretch out into the biggest grin he’d ever had in his life.

And then his brother nearly ruined it.

“Karrin …” Harry’s baritone called from the other room. “Where are you hiding?”

Thomas had never heard his brother talk like that. Thank whatever god existed, but he knew that tone of voice and his grin stretched impossibly wider as Karrin shivered despite herself, her eyes clenching shut, another healthy blush coming up all the way from her toes to her forehead.

It was adorable and he was living for it. He was going to give them hell for this, it was going to be so sweet he’d probably never need sugar again.

Harry’s steps got closer and Thomas smirked at Karrin, who looked like she wanted to disappear into the ground.

Which was something Thomas was ready to help her with when all six foot nine inches of his little brother stalked in behind the blushing woman.

As naked as the day he was born. His hawk-like features predatory as his gaze fell on Karrin’s back and he smirked, hands already reaching out to the small woman. His own body clearly … stood to attention around her.

No wonder Karrin had looked so happy.

He made himself sick sometimes.

“Gotcha Karri-”

His brother stared at him. Then at himself. Then at Karrin, who seemed to be rooted to the spot.

“Hells bells! Thomas!” His brother promptly put himself behind Murphy and went just as red as she was. “Knock first you pervert!”

Leave it to Harry to break the silence first. Thomas growled and started to look for the first thing he could throw at his brother.

“Knock? Are you fucking kidding me?” Thomas pointed at the two people he’d clearly interrupted, with angry juts of his fingers and snarled. “How long?!”

They both had the decency to blush some more and Murphy leant against Harry instinctively as she looked up at him with a sheepish smile. She nodded at him and Harry’s shoulders relaxed, his large hands closing around her arm.

“Remember the heist with the Denarians?” Harry asked.

“That was months ago!” Thomas bellowed as he stalked forward. Pointing a finger in both of their faces. “You two have been getting it on for months and you didn’t tell anyone?! How the _fuck_ have you kept it a secret for that long?! I’ve been calling this for years. How did you two morons keep this from anyone longer than a week!”

He was met with silence, guilty silence and he inhaled sharply as he glowered at them both and the cogs in his brain started to work again.

“Who. Else,” Thomas said dangerously. “Knows.”

“Molly,” Harry said after another look at the small woman protecting his modesty. Before he glanced back through the door, no doubt planning an escape. “Michael, Charity, the Alphas and Butters.”

“Empty night,” Thomas snarled and pointed another finger at his brother. “Does Maggie know?”

“No,” they both said quickly. Real panic flickering across their features. Harry set his jaw and glared challenge at him.  “You can’t-”

“ _I_ will decide what I can and can’t do you pair of assholes.” Thomas pinched the bridge of his nose and glared at the empty wall to the side as he took a long breath. “Go get dressed, both of you. Then you will tell me everything. And if you skip a single goddamn detail … I am telling Michael, Charity and your mother what you two deviants have spent a Sunday morning doing. Am I clear?”

He pointed at Murphy this time, her cheeks going hot with indignation and more than a little fear he noticed, as she went to square up to him. “Who are you ordering around vampire?”

“My dumbass brother and his almost naked girlfriend,” Thomas fired back. “That alright with you?”

She went to retaliate but stopped when Harry’s fingers wrapped around her wrist. It drew her attention to him and she must have seen something she liked because she was staring despite the situation. Thomas was close enough to notice the subtle change in redness in her cheeks.

“Come on,” Harry said, glancing at Thomas. “I’m uh … exposed. You know he’s not gonna let this go if we don’t play ball.”

His brother leant down to whisper in his girlfriend’s ear. “And the quicker we get rid of him the quicker we can … continue? Quicker the better if you get my meaning?”

The hopeful lilt made Thomas roll his eyes – almost as much as his dumbass brother forgetting he had _vampire_ hearing for fuck’s sake! – did.

Karrin seemed to forget too though and the pleased smirk flickered across her face for half a second before she glared at Thomas again.

“Ten minutes,” Karrin said measuredly, fixing him with her best cop look. It didn’t work nearly as well when said ex-cop’s chest was pointing at you though. “That’s how long you get.”

“Just go put some damn clothes on,” Thomas groaned.

The two left, Harry hiding behind Murphy the best he could as the skulked back to his bedroom. Thomas let his frown last right up until he heard the bedroom door click shut.

Then he pumped his fist and hissed victoriously. His phone out of his pocket and dialling Justine in one fluid motion.

“Hi babe,” Thomas whispered excitedly. “Guess who I found at Harry’s …”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thomas really should have knocked lol.


	6. Loving The Law

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murphy has something special planned for Harry's birthday this year. Post Skin Game.

I don’t know how you feel about your birthday, but I hate mine.

Halloween is the time of the year that the veil between this world and the Nevernever is weakest and all the freaks and geeks come out to play. Supernatural and normal alike. So I’m always busy and almost always in mortal peril.

Many happy returns to me.

But this year, this year, I’d actually had a good birthday. The only slight calamity had been Maggie nearly dropping my birthday cake when she’d run out with it at the Carpenters’ house. I’ll take that as the worst thing that happened on my birthday any time. And as I stood next to the bed I shared with Karrin, I couldn’t help but grin to myself.

Because I had a sneaking little suspicion that I was about to get the secret birthday present she’d hinted at this morning. Even I didn’t need a road map to figure out what sort of present Karrin was promising. The little kiss behind my ear and mischief twinkling in her eyes had been all the clue I needed.

I’d been thinking about whatever Karrin had had planned all day, which was undoubtedly my girlfriend’s plan in telling me first thing in the morning. The banter we’d had the entire time we’d known each other should have warned me she’d be a tease as a lover.

Something I loved every single second of. The woman owned me and I was happily owned by her. Whatever she had planned for our nightly celebrations was bound to be mind-blowing.

Though she was taking her time coming in from the bathroom. I know she’d said she had to get ready but she’d been in there quite a while at this point.

“Karrin?” I called out through the open bedroom door. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Karrin’s voice came back, muffled slightly by the walls between us. “Stay where you are. I’ll be right in.”

I shrugged. If she said she was okay, she was okay. I perched on the edge of the bed facing the open door. I wanted a front row seat for this.

An easy smile spread over my face when I heard the bathroom door open and close. Looking down at the t-shirt I’d changed to sleep in and getting a wicked thought through my head.

Karrin would never admit it, but she was more than a little fond of randomly finding me shirtless. Her eyes did always run over me like I was a particular fine cut of meat when she did. Something that made the Neanderthal in me cheer. I revelled in such a beautiful woman staring at me with obvious desire and want. And well, two could play at the unexpected reveal game. It was my birthday after all.

I just about managed to get my shirt up so my stomach was bared to the air when Karrin appeared in the doorway and my hands went slack, along with my jaw, and my shirt went back down over my body instantly.

“Oh no,” Karrin said with a sinful smirk. “Don’t stop on my account Harry, please do take off your shirt.”

My brain went blank. I don’t know how else to describe it. I think it was because all the blood in my head flowed directly to my groin while I drank in the wet dream made flesh stood before me.

Hey, don’t look at me like that, she’s my girlfriend, I’m allowed to think about her that way. She told me so.

She stood with her hip jutted out to the side, extenuating its curve and crossed her arms over her chest, drawing my attention to her breasts more than it already was. What she was wearing almost demanded I stare at them.

Karrin was wearing a cop costume.

A decidedly sexy one.

She had a patrolman’s cap at a jaunty angle, adding a playful edge to the whole ensemble which was working cos hells bells did I want to play with her now.

Her blonde hair was pulled into a loose ponytail under the cap, leaving her cheekbones exposed and leading my gaze to her dazzling blue eyes. Warmth, delight, arousal and satisfaction staring back at me and making me twitch below the waist. A light dusting of makeup made her eyes pop even more and her lips just a shade darker than they were naturally.

The vest, which her breasts were straining against, was dark blue. A long black zip ran down the middle, the little metal zipper resting in Karrin’s cleavage tantalisingly, straps went over her shoulders leaving acres of kissably smooth skin from the tops of her breasts up to her neck for me to kiss.

The vest opened on either side of her chest and stomach, from just under the swell of her breasts to just above the hem of the top. Straps hugged at her with just enough give, that I could probably wrap my hands around them, and split the gap in the top into four windows of more creamy skin.

A sliver of her bare stomach that I wanted to run my tongue over separated the deep blue vest from the black shorts that were little more than panties. They clung to her hips and left nothing to the imagination. Equipment pouches hung over the bottom of the shorts and that drew my eyes to her supple legs.

I followed them down to the intricate pattern of her thigh high tights, the almost see through fabric trailing down to her otherwise bare feet and I made a decision with what little of my senses were coming back.

Whatever else came off her tonight, those thigh highs weren’t.

I had to smile as I took in the little Murphy touches to the costume as well.

Costumes like this normally came with little plastic imitations of cop gear. But Murphy’s nightstick and handcuffs were the real thing. The shaft of the nightstick rested down her thigh and the heavy metal of the handcuffs were hanging from one of her fingers. She bounced them teasingly and winked at me from under the cap.

I was still reeling my jaw off the floor when Karrin prowled forwards, apparently satisfied with my obvious approval.

“Stars and stones,” I whispered as Karrin came to a stop between my long legs, her sparkling eyes falling to my lap as she smirked smugly at me.

“Do you like your birthday present Harry?” She ran her fingers over my chest. She leant in close so I could smell the strawberry body lotion she used. “I hope you do.”

I nodded and she kissed my cheek, a tasting, slow savouring to it. Her blonde hair that fell loose from her cap tickling my skin. She kissed a sensual path to my ear, her body almost pressed against mine but not quite.

“Do you want the rest of it now?” She whispered breathily, her fingers pulling on my collar, rubbing her legs against my inner thighs until they grazed my hardening cock. She took my earlobe in her mouth and nibbled possessively. “Mr Dresden?”

I groaned in the back of my throat and I remembered I had hands.

I brought my fingers up to rub along the top of her tights and cupped the supple muscle of her thighs, dragging my touch up to her ass, my fingers not finding the fabric of her shorts until they were already half up the lovely curve.

Karrin was too close to hide the sharp intake of breath and flash of delight in her eyes, the crack in the sexy cop act was covered quickly though.

She unclipped the nightstick and slipped it under each of my hands so I wasn’t touching her anymore. She stepped back so she was stood level with the middle of my thighs and pressed the end of the stick against my chest. “No.”

“Karrin,” I groaned, balling my fists up in the duvet and let my eyes run over her again. A slight flush in her cheeks fading away as she pushed a little harder on my chest with well-practiced authority.

“That’s Officer Murphy to you,” Karrin whispered, rubbing it over my chest in a slow, tight circle that looped low to my stomach. “Understood?”

Oh. _Oh_.

My mouth fell open again and the sexy cop act dropped for another split second of doubt. A flicker of uncertainty spread across Karrin’s face.

All of the sex we’d had had been phenomenal and finding out our preferences had been hours of endless discovery that we’d thrown ourselves into on a nightly basis. Some of the things we’d done I hadn’t realised I’d wanted to do before I found myself doing them with Karrin. But role play … that was new.

And I was _down_ for it. In a big way.

“Yes ma’am,” I said lowly, thank fuck we’d gotten the Soulgaze out of the way so I could drown myself in the depths of her eyes. “Whatever you say.”

Karrin marshalled a beaming smile into something more controlled and it was just as sexy as her beaming smile was beautiful. I wanted to rip her out of those shorts and hang onto those straps as I took her.

But I’d have to wait. Karrin clearly had something planned.

Lucky me.

“I told you I’d catch you Dresden,” Karrin started, taking on the voice from before and running the nightstick further down my stomach until it was centimetres from my hard cock.

I groaned as she guided the edge of the nightstick along my straining shaft through my pyjama pants, urging it harder and harder as she fixed me with a killer look.

“Shall we get started on that confession?” she purred, lifting the stick from me and pushing me back onto the heels of my hands by poking me hard in the chest. The steps she took made her bounce against the tight vest and I bit my lip to keep a needy whine in my throat.

She tapped my chin up so our gazes met and she peered down at me imperiously. “Something got your attention Dresden?”

“No Officer,” I said softly, my hands itching by my sides. Fuck, this no touching was driving me mad already. “Wouldn’t dare.”

“Yes you would,” Karrin whispered. Her free hand reached down to my cock, teasing my tip through my pyjamas as she kept the nightstick under my chin. “That’s why you’re here, you’ve been staring at me. You like what you see?”

_Fuck. Yes._

“You got me all wrong,” I forced out between shallow breaths as she stroked at me, tortuously slow fingers tracing my tip and shaft. My eyes flickered when she wrapped her fingers around me and pumped slowly. “I wasn’t staring at you.”

“Liar,” Karrin murmured, her lips now so close to mine I could taste her lip gloss on my tongue. “I know what you’re thinking about. Maybe if you confess I’ll let you have what you so obviously want.”

I opened my eyes, hers meeting mine instantly before she squeezed me and smirked at my moan dancing over her lips.

“I’ve got nothing to confess,” I said. Because damn it all if I was gonna let this game end from a bit of dirty talk and a hand job. Karrin would be disappointed if it was that easy. So I set my jaw, grinned and moved to kiss the tip of nightstick while looking straight at Karrin. “Nothing.”

The hand on my manhood stilled and Karrin purred. “We’ll see, stand up Mr Dresden. You and I are gonna have words.”

She stepped back and let me stand, I missed her touch instantly but I knew I wouldn’t have to wait long for it to be back. Little patience, Harry, Karrin’s clearly got something planned.

I loomed over her and leered at her in character, and just in general, the fresh angle gave me a spectacular view after all.

“Turn around,” she ordered and I happily complied.

She took my wrists, not as roughly as I’d seen her actually do but not gently either. It was hot. I felt the cold steel of her standard issue handcuffs slap around my wrists and with a click both my hands were bound.

I turned back around and Karrin was smirking at me. That was even hotter. But now she’d removed my ability to do anything about it, and she looked more and more pleased with herself as I tested the strength of the cuffs.

She pulled on the front of my shirt until my face was level with hers, she nibbled my lower lip. “You’re gonna confess to your crimes Dresden,” she murmured, promising all sorts of things with her tone. “And you’re gonna thank me for making you.”

Her hand went up into my hair, wrapping her fingers in the messy mop and scratched my scalp. It sent shivers all the way down my spine and heat followed.

“What crimes?” I murmured back, letting my eyes fall shut as her fingers roamed over my scalp and down to my neck and collar.

“That you’ve been staring at me for years. That you fantasised about me for just as long. That you wanted to fuck me until I screamed for you ever since we met on that bridge.” Karrin pulled on my lip gently with her teeth and licked it with a little moan of delight.

I panted at the teasing kiss and went to deepen it only to find a solitary finger between our lips.

“And you wanna know your biggest crime?” she whispered against her finger.

“What?” I asked back, equally quiet.

“Not realising that I wanted that too,” Karrin’s purr came back as she slipped her hand under the waistband of my pyjamas to wrap around my cock. “That I’ve wanted that ever since I met you.”

My skin sang at her touch and I groaned and cursed as she pumped me slowly, squeezing every time her small hand got to my tip.

“Gonna confess to your crimes Dresden?” Karrin asked teasingly. Her hand picked up speed around me so I was hissing and groaning in a faster rhythm.

“No,” I growled, straining against the cuffs in useless rebellion. Not entirely because of the role play either. I really, _really_ wanted to touch her. “I won’t.”

“Good,” Karrin said. She pulled away and guided me out of the bedroom by tugging on the waistband of my pyjamas. “I hate it when they break easy.”

Keeping her fingers curled under my pyjamas, jaw-clenching pleasure shooting through me when they grazed my tip, Karrin led me from the bedroom to the living room. Which I had to admit was a shock, I would have thought everything she had planned could be done in the bedroom.

Though mostly, I was just trying to distract myself from staring at her half covered ass in those shorts as she walked. It was captivating and even though I knew I was allowed, hell welcomed, to stare at her body … some things are instinctive.

Not to mention, if I let myself just stare at how the shorts rode up on her ass to show me there was nothing underneath … I wouldn’t be lasting anywhere near as long as I was going to need to. The fact that the vest was so tight I knew she wasn’t wearing anything underneath it either had nearly done me in when she’d first entered the bedroom.

She looked back over her shoulder at me, that same smug expression telling me she knew exactly what I was doing. She winked and let her nails linger against my cock a little longer when she pulled me past the sofa.

“Now Mr Dresden,” Karrin said in a sultry voice. She turned to stand before me and ran both her hands over my hips, easing the soft cotton bottoms away from my waist until they slipped to the carpet, revealing how much I was enjoying my present once and for all. “Mmm, let’s get started on your interrogation shall we?”

Her hand gripped my cock, running up and down the shaft, her other hand pulling on my shirt. Making me arch over her body, she all but frogmarched me to the low slung chair in the middle of the living room.

“Sit,” she ordered and I did. Keeping my hands behind the back of the chair so I wouldn’t crush my arms between my back and the chair.

“Good boy,” she said. Her hands lifting the t-shirt off and throwing it to the floor with a dismissive gesture. She drank in the image of me naked and handcuffed and the look in her eyes sent electricity racing from the top of my head to my toes. And certain other places on the way.

“Last chance to confess,” Karrin said as she moved smoothly between my legs again, her hands running up my bare thighs, sending little shocks of pleasure through me until she was so close that if I moved my head forward I’d be able to kiss the top of her breasts.

Which I really wanted to do.

“If you confess now, you get what you want sooner,” Karrin promised, her fingers as gentle as her voice, caressing the muscles of my chest with almost reverent touches. She guided my head to her breasts and groaned pointedly as my lips grazed the swell of them. The vibration through her chest jiggling them against me and I matched her groan with my own. 

“Mmm, but if you make me make you confess …”

She lifted my chin and the intensity in her eyes made my cock throb. She played with my hair and cradled my chin as she lowered her lips to mine, almost touching but not quite.

“No more Miss Nice Cop.” Her voice carried promise of things that even my deepest fantasies were afraid to put into words and in that moment I was assaulted with one certain fact.

There was no woman, supernatural or otherwise, sexier than Karrin Murphy and there never had or would be.

But I also knew what I was supposed to say.

“Make me _Officer_ ,” I growled, placing a long sucking kiss on her neck and relished the shiver I sent through her.

Karrin shook her head, she pushed me back with her fingers on my chest and sighed. “You’re gonna regret that Mr Dresden.”

I snorted and was about to retort when Karrin revealed why she’d chosen this chair in particular.

The height difference between me and Karrin had presented some challenges and some wonderfully delightful advantages in the bedroom. One of her favourite advantages was that I could and would, lift her up and slam her into the wall and take her right there sometimes.

Though one lament Karrin had was that she wanted to be able to kneel and … um … well, blow me.

Look, it’s not me! I’m more than happy with Karrin even wanting to give me a blowjob at all. I’m nowhere near bothered on how it happens and I won’t pretend like that every time Karrin had given me one that I’d found new levels of bliss and pleasure.

I personally think the only reason she wanted to do it on her knees is because when she first said it I turned into a tomato and rambled into how I didn’t mind. Something I’d discovered is that Karrin delighted in making me awkward and if she found something that got me worked up but I’m awkward about … she leaned into it hard.

So when Karrin dropped onto her knees and smirked at me, I knew exactly what was going through her head.

“I told you,” Karrin purred as her lips came close to my leaking tip. “No more Miss Nice Cop.”

Soft, nibbling kisses covered my tip and I was groaning the second her plush lips met my glands. Karrin swirled her tongue over my abused head, making little pleased sounds as she peered up at me from under the cap. She peppered kisses up and down my shaft, bringing her lips to my base and sighing happily.

“Karri-”

I cut off with a low moan, Karrin running her tongue up the entirety of me and bringing her lips to my tip once again. She raised a pale eyebrow at me and I throbbed against her lips.

“Officer Murphy,” I corrected and Karrin’s eyes sparkled.

Her mouth closed around my head and my brain exploded.

Then she sucked on me and my brain exploded again.

I started openly groaning as Karrin bobbed her head up and down, taking more and more of me in her mouth. She moaned around my cock, the vibrations calling out to the already building pressure that was tickling at my base.

My head rolled back over the chair and I breathed hard, Karrin’s head coming to a stop so only half of me was in her mouth, she let out a long groan, the seal around my cock breaking with a pop. Looking at me through her lashes Karrin sucked on me, before dragging her lips up so she was kissing my weeping tip.

Her tongue lapped at my delight and swirled her tongue around me.

“Ready to confess?” She asked breathily. “Or do you need more convincing?”

I swallowed the roar for more and just shook my head. I didn’t trust my mouth to carry on the game and I _really_ wanted it to carry on.

Karrin sighed dramatically, her fingers teasing the lower half of my shaft, running over my balls and tickling lightly. It made those explosions come back on a minor level and I nearly swallowed my tongue.

“Really Mr Dresden,” she said with a long suffering sigh. Kisses rained down on my tip and shaft in slow, possessive sensuality. “Just confess like a good boy.”

“No,” I groaned out.

“Have it your way,” Karrin said. She took me in her mouth again only this time she pumped my shaft with one hand, tickling my balls with the other and bobbed her head like she was trying to swallow the rest of me.

“Ka-Ka-Ka,” I tried but I broke into constant groaning when she started to suck me up. “Fuck.”

Karrin moaned long around me and the pressure began to make its way up my base.

I couldn’t take it. The mix of Karrin, the sexy cop outfit and the truly astounding blowjob … I was gonna finish. I couldn’t stop it.

My head rocked back, I clenched my fingers around the cuffs and breathed heavily, my hips jutting up to meet her dropping head and a delighted little moan tickled my manhood.

“Gonna …” I panted.

But just as I felt merciful release coming, Karrin pulled me out of her and rested her elbows on my legs. My desperate cock left unattended.

“Did I say you could cum Mr Dresden?” Karrin asked salaciously as she rose from her knees, leaning her body over me so I could feel the swell of her breasts against my chest. She cradled my chin and kissed behind my ear.

I growled out my frustration. The delight it brought her obvious, I could feel her nipples against my chest even through that vest.

“Officer,” I ground out.

“Shh,” Karrin said, placing a finger to my lip, which I kissed hungrily, sucking on it and whining as she pulled it away from my reach. “You want to touch me Mr Dresden?”

“Uh huh,” I said, my eyes still closed, her hands running over my head and weaving through my hair. I groaned into the touch and leant into it when her palm cupped my cheek. I kissed it gently and she let me.

“Shame you didn’t confess then,” Karrin said, nibbling my ear. “I told you you’d regret it.”

Fuck she was cruel, so fucking cruel. She knew how much I loved to touch her. To eke out those little pants and long moans of utmost pleasure while she wrapped around me and screamed my name.

I stared at her and she shivered as if she could read my mind.

“You want a deal Mr Dresden?” Karrin murmured, lowering herself down to straddle me, her legs wrapping around the chair and me so her ankles were locked by my hands. She ground her covered sex against my rigid length and sighed happily at the friction that made me hiss with desire. “We can deal.”

“What?” I gasped, her lips finding my neck. Sucking on my pulse and peeling heavy breaths from me. She gripped my still hard self and rubbed it against where her slit would be under those shorts.

“Confess to one crime.” She ground her hips over me and clung to the back of my head to keep me from reclining back. The control over my body making me quiver with need. “And something can come off.”

“Cuffs,” I said immediately and she shook her head.

“Then I’ll only get one confession, I want as many as possible. I’ve heard how good you are at convincing officers to forget what they’re meant to be doing if you can touch them.” She kissed under my chin, licking circles along my jaw. The fluffing my ego some made me smirk. Buttering me up to get what she wanted. Bad cop and then good cop tactics in their purest form.

I’d be upset it was gonna work but honestly I was just relieved at the possibility of touching her in any way was gonna be an option. “One confession, one piece of clothing gone and I let you use this on me.”

She pressed a finger against my tongue, and when her finger entered my mouth I sucked on it greedily.

Karrin moaned in my lap, wriggling over my cock and I groaned. Fire flashed across her cheeks and she pulled my head to her chest. “Deal?”

I nodded. “I have been staring at you for years,” I confessed immediately. My eyes glued to her straining cleavage as I imagined the vest gone and all that glorious flesh mine to plunder.

“Nuh-uh,” Karrin said, lifting my face just before I started nibbling along her breasts. “I need details Mr Dresden. When and why. I need more to make my case against you stick.”

I groaned and wracked my brain, her rolling hips not helping me to think but the soft moans into my hair were helping even less. Probably because I could feel the giddy smile on her face even though she was hiding it from me.

“That dress,” I whispered into her neck, peppering it with kisses that she mercifully allowed me. Whether because she couldn’t resist anymore or because she was letting me have some relief I didn’t care. “The one at the reunion, I couldn’t stop staring at your legs in it.”

“Mmm,” she sighed, her breathing hitched when I sucked on her pulse, her hips still grinding her against my cock. It was maddening and I loved it. “What were you thinking while you stared at my legs Mr Dresden?”

“What would they feel like wrapped around me,” I growled. I rocked my hips up on the chair and Karrin hissed into my hair. Her rolling hips speeding up some more. “About if all those martial arts had made you as flexible as I hoped.”

Karrin groaned, reaching down to stroke at me, her fingers shaking slightly as I kept thrusting up into her. She bit down on her lip to swallow a wanton moan. She pulled my head away from her neck, revealing a trail of red marks I hadn’t been aware I’d left, running from her neck to the top of a breast.

“You’re such a pig Dresden,” she said but the insult held no fire. Her eyes sparkled with lust before her lips graced my temple. “But a deal’s a deal. Take the vest off.”

“I can’t,” I whined. Her fingers were still stroking at me and honestly, I was impressed I’d been able to talk at all with how good it all felt. “Cuffs.”

“You’ve got teeth haven’t you?” She replied matter-of-factly.

Fuck she was sexy, so goddamn sexy. I couldn’t wait to make her understand just how much I wanted her. How much I needed her.

I kissed between the swell of her breasts, a shudder of purest ecstasy running through me and her. I languished kisses over her half-covered bust, running my tongue over what I could and moaned roughly when Karrin bucked her hips against me some more.

“Mr D-Dresden,” her voice caught and a victorious part of me cheered at the need in her voice, breaking through the act. “The vest.”

“Yes Officer,” I purred, relishing the shivers than ran over her exposed skin as I kissed down her cleavage. I took the zip in between my lips and led it down, down, down, my heartbeat thumping in my ears as the vest came looser and looser and by the time my lips were as low as I could go still handcuffed to the chair, her breasts had made a bid for freedom.

I don’t know if you’ve seen previously restrained breasts pop out of a top but when it’s happening right by your head it makes you pay attention. The image of a novelty police vest framing and pushing my girlfriend’s delectable, full breasts together made me shudder desperately as I locked away that image forever.

Karrin let out a sigh of relief which quickly morphed into a moan as I wasted no time in assaulting the stiff pink nipple of Karrin’s left breast.

“Har- Mr Dresden!” She gasped as I sucked on her nipple, my hand jangling in the cuffs when I tried to bring it up so I could please both of her breasts at once. “Oh God.”

I smirked against her breast, nibbling marks into the glorious skin that was already going flush from my attention. Karrin’s hips grew ever more frantic and I moaned with her nipple in my mouth.

Karrin made a strangled grasp and the tight grip of her legs around me and the chair made something go crack in a decidedly wooden way.

The back of the chair, something in my head roared. I could free myself and then Miss Sexy Cop could be reminded what happened when you took away my ability to give pleasure easily.

But no, this whole act was my birthday present and Karrin had put a lot of thought into it. I wasn’t going to take control because she’d wonderfully tortured me with her body. I would let her set the pace, the game would end when she decided and not a moment before.

That didn’t mean I wouldn’t thrust against her a little harder to try and hurry that decision along. Or suck on her nipple more hungrily to make her desperate for an orgasm.

She didn’t need much encouragement though, she shucked out of the vest quickly, the dark blue thing fluttering to the floor beneath us and Karrin was left topless in my lap, rolling her hips over my cock and moaning into the air above my head.

Her other breast looked shamelessly underappreciated now it was fully out of its confines so I switched targets. I worried the hardened pink nub with my tongue, swirling it around as I wrapped my tongue and then lips around it.

Karrin’s hands dropped to my manhood and she dragged my tip along her lips through the damp shorts and we moaned hungrily together. I couldn’t take much more of this, it was too much. I needed her.

“Another confession,” I all but pleaded. “You want another one right?”

“Uh huh,” Karrin breathed, our eyes meeting guilelessly, her lips finding my forehead as she panted and grunted on top of me.

“A sexy one right?” I groaned.

“Your crimes yes,” Karrin said. Her breathing steadying even as she continued to drive me insane by using me like a toy.

“I’ve always had the fantasy of making you beg for me,” I said, collapsing back against the chair, it felt too good to do anything else now. I couldn’t focus on anything but how good she was making me feel. “I used to use the image of you naked and begging for me when I …”

Hells bells, I couldn’t believe I was about to tell her this.

“When you what Mr Dresden?” Karrin whispered seductively, leaning her whole body against me and nibbling on my throat. “Come on, confess your crimes to Officer Murphy.”

Fuck.

“When I touched myself,” I whispered.

“Mmmm,” Karrin mewled, pulling away with a lingering kiss along the column of my throat. “That’s a big confession, I think that deserves a better reward than less clothing. Don’t you Mr Dresden?”

 I nodded eagerly, her lips capturing mine in a hungry, pleased kiss, the kind of kiss they can’t write songs about because it would never make it past the censors. She pumped my cock slowly, slipping her tongue past my lips and moaning so our lips vibrated.

Her hand went up my shaft and over my tip with ticklish strokes, before she slipped the shorts aside and I was engulfed in her sweet heat.

My mouth flew open in a silent scream but Karrin didn’t leave me long to savour the feeling of her innermost squeezing around me.

With a shudder of delight her powerful thighs wrapped around me, her legs unwinding from the chair and somehow filling the space between my back and the chair … I’d been right about that flexibility apparently, and once she’d wrapped her arms around my neck, the sex goddess who’d deigned to be my girlfriend, started to bounce.

Her ass hit my thighs with the slap of skin on skin, the soft feel of the shorts rubbing against my shaft with every bounce Karrin made only adding to the pleasure. It was … mind-blowing wasn’t good enough, nor was exquisite and the more she bounced on me, the smaller my vocabulary was getting.

Her fingers weaved into my hair, her lips ferocious with desire, devouring my tongue until I was left dizzy. I strained uselessly against the handcuffs, but I wasn’t really trying to do it on purpose. We moaned together, kisses broken with mutterings of each other’s names, the game left aside as Karrin grew more and more frantic.

The cap fell off somewhere in the middle, her hair escaping the loose ponytail some more and fell around her flushed face and neck, her breasts begging for my touch as the hardened tips teased me during every jiggle the motion caused.

Her walls squeezed around me, I wasn’t going to last long and going by how Karrin was wrapped around me, neither was she. I could help with that though.

“ _Harry_ ,” she almost screamed when I thrust up to meet her. Her fingers dug into my shoulders and her mouth buried into my neck. “Fuck, I’m gonna cum.”

I grunted and a strangled cry left me when she unravelled on me and my own orgasm rushed up and into her, our hips riding out our climaxes, Karrin’s walls quivering around me again and again, multiple orgasms were definitely God’s best gift to women.

She clung to me as we came back to earth, panting like we’d run a marathon and sharing messy kisses.

“So,” I said, still out of breath and in between a particularly long session of mini kisses. “Sexy cop huh?”

Karrin shrugged and it sent fresh pleasure up my shaft, damn woman winked at me. “I saw the way you looked at me in my uniform way back when … I assume you liked?”

She wiggled on me and I thrust up into her with a growl. It earned me a gasp and a rebellious look.

“You’re still handcuffed Dresden, be careful how good you make me feel, I know you’ve got more confessions for me.” The threat was empty, Karrin wouldn’t be able to keep the act up anymore. But going by the look in her eyes … I had better be up for rounds two through however long we could stretch this out.

“Let’s just say you shouldn’t throw out the costume.” I kissed her again, slipping my tongue past her already opening lips.

“Mmm,” Karrin said as our lips came apart. “We’re not done playing with it tonight yet.”

“Lucky me,” I chuckled. I rattled my handcuffs. “Speaking of playing though … little help?”

An evil smirk spread across my girlfriend’s face and she fished out a key from the apparently functioning pockets on the shorts. She leant forwards, bringing her body against mine and flicked the key into the cuffs. All while I was still in her the evil, gorgeous woman.

The steel rings fell from my wrists and I wasted no time in bringing my hands around to cup her breasts and rub my thumbs over her nipples.

“Harry,” she moaned, rocking her hips instinctively. I fought against the pleasure racing through my still throbbing cock. I wasn’t willing to wait to recover, Little Harry would have to suck it up.

I ran my arm under Karrin’s ass and scooped her up, her legs repositioning around my waist to lock herself against me.

“I’m sorry Officer Murphy,” I growled, squeezing her perfection of an ass hard at the same time as I massaged her breast. “I’m resisting arrest.”

I had the foresight to pick up the discarded cap beneath the chair and rested it on top of Karrin’s head. Then I stood, still in her exquisite heat.

“Ungh,” Karrin said eloquently, each step I took sending fresh flashes of silencing pleasure through her whole body, her grip on my shoulders was so tight I was amazed she hadn’t broken skin. Her lips found my neck and she lavished it with hungry kisses.

I freed my hand from between us, undid what remained of her ponytail and weaved my free fingers through the blonde silk of her hair when it fell to her nape. Karrin groaned into my neck, the tremors of her walls around my sensitive cock warning me Karrin was about to have another orgasm.

I might have made some more exaggerated steps on my way back to the bedroom. What? She’d had her fun with me … it was my turn. She’d thank me tomorrow. If she could talk when I was done.

Maybe birthdays aren’t so bad after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm already working on a short sequel! Don't chase me with sticks! I won't leave you hanging like that for long I promise!
> 
> *dives for cover behind the slowly growing pile*


	7. Taking The Law In His Own Hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry wasn't quite done playing with his birthday present. Part two of Loving The Law.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, and for anyone wondering ... I had Beyonce's Partition pretty much on repeat for this one ... so consider that the soundtrack lol.

I let Karrin spill down onto the bed, the orgasm she’d had while clinging to me on our way to the bedroom still rocking through her body. The patrolman’s cap fell off her head again while she wriggled on the sheets enticingly. I followed her, coming to rest between her legs and nuzzled at her neck. Her smile flickering as my stubble tickled her skin.

My hand went down to her tender sex, running a finger over her pulsing clit gently through the shorts. I didn’t want to hurt her, she had to recover a little before I kept playing with my present. But God I _needed_ to touch her.

“Oh God,” she moaned into her hand, her half-lidded eyes running up me dazedly as a lazy smile melted me to my toes. “I thought it was your birthday, not mine.”

I laughed and placed gentle kisses up to her ear. “I was never one to play with a toy once and put it down Karrin,” I murmured in my sexiest voice. You know that husky thing we do for our women that makes their toes curl? Yeah, that one.

It worked a treat, Karrin letting out a happy whine while her legs lifted, her knees rubbing at my hips, the smooth feel of her thigh highs intriguing against my naked skin. She raised an eyebrow at me, but the imperious gesture was ruined by the fact that her pupils were dilating. “Who said I was your toy Dresden?” She murmured.

“I don’t know Officer Murphy,” I growled into her ear, nibbling it and rubbing her clit in a delicate but purposeful circle. “Who did?”

Karrin groaned desperately at the tender touch and her fingers meshed into my hair. “Damn it Harry,” she hissed. “More.”

I chuckled into her neck, my kisses having led me lower to the column of her throat. My finger still teasing her with sweet torture. “Only if you _confess_.”

I felt her whine in her throat, the reverberations shaking my lips. “You liked that?” she whispered.

“Loved it,” I affirmed and nuzzled her neck some more. My teasing finger coming to a stop as my hand rose to rest over her tummy. “Do you need to rest a little? It’s okay if you do, we’re not going to sleep any time soon.”

Karrin giggled, her fingers running over my scalp and playing with my hair. It felt glorious and I couldn’t resist leaning into the touch, my eyes threatening to close as she scratched. “We definitely aren’t. Give me a second to catch my breath?”

“Course,” I said with a warm smile, my hand caressing over her stomach to her hip. Tender touches of my lips to her throat making Karrin sigh happily.

“Cmere,” she said, tugging my head up lightly.

I kissed my way up to her mouth, falling into a slow, sighing embrace. Karrin’s mouth opened for me as we lost ourselves in the tender moment. Savouring the little things was part of what kept you sane.

And we had definitely found ourselves savouring a lot of little moments since we’d gotten together over a year ago. As many as we could find time for.

I wrapped my arms under her, lowering my body on top of hers carefully. Karrin might not mind all of my weight on her but still she’d kick my ass for saying it out loud, but she _was_ a little delicate at the moment. Her thighs rubbed against my hips, a soft little sigh escaping her lips as we broke the kiss.

“I love you Karrin,” I murmured. I rested my forehead against hers. We shared silly smiles and Karrin’s eyes shone like they did whenever I told her I loved her.

“I love you too,” she said, capturing my lips in another quick kiss. She wiggled under me and I groaned. She smirked. “Mmm, you’re still hard?”

I blushed a little and swallowed up that smirk with a swift kiss. “Have you seen you? Of course I am.”

“Aww, poor Mr Dresden,” Karrin teased, still wiggling under me. I collapsed my face into her neck and moaned. Fuck, just _God_. The way the woman could move her hips. I must have been onto something with that whole sex goddess thing. “Is Officer Murphy being mean?”

“Karrin,” I forced out.

“Hush,” Karrin said, a strong leg hooking around mine, her heel stroking up my calf, the soft feel of her tight caressing my leg. She reached above her head and placed the cap back on her head. “Play with your toy Mr Dresden.”

“Keep the cap on,” I growled and repeated the trailing kisses down her throat I’d started before.

“Yeah,” Karrin breathed, her hand holding the cap on and arching her body up against mine, spurring me lower.

My lips travelled down her throat to the top of her breasts, a light suck on the thin skin over the jut of her collarbones earning me an approving groan, her heel still rubbing up and down my calf, grazing the back of my thigh as I moved lower down her body.

I nibbled more marks into the swell of her breasts, Karrin’s fingers resting on my head as I hovered to take in the view of her beneath me.

She watched me through half-lidded eyes, her hair pushed down by the cap trailing down her flushed cheeks, drawing my attention to her nibbling her bottom lip. Her breasts were covered in my love bites and her nipples were so hard they demanded to be pinched.

So I did.

“ _Harry_ ,” she groaned loudly. Her fingers tightening in my hair and tugging absently. She lifted her hips to rub herself against my stomach and I had to remind myself to breathe. “Lower.”

I kissed the nipple I’d pinched, suckling on it lightly to make her moan some more, her eyes fluttering closed as my tongue flicked the nub over and over. I loved every centimetre of her but I had to admit I had always been a boob guy and Karrin’s … Karrin’s were sculpted delight and I would never tire of teasing them.

“You told me to play Officer,” I said, switching to her other nipple. I sucked it hard, eliciting another long moan from my girlfriend. My hands ran up her sides, cupping her breasts and massaging them tenderly. Kneading them as I swapped from nipple to nipple.  “I’m playing.”

“Mmm,” Karrin moaned, her body writhing against me, pushing her breasts against my face and palms with abandon. “More.”

I’d never get sick of hearing Karrin sound like that. Desperate and lost in pleasure I was giving her, demanding more of it. More of me.

Well the lady wanted more, and I was never one to leave a lady hanging.

Reluctantly, my lips left her wondrous breasts and led a steady path down over her toned abs. More red marks fading into her skin as I made my way to her waistline. My hands lingering on her breasts a moment longer than my lips had before they came to rest on her hips.

Karrin let out quick breaths, her hips thrusting against me more and more enthusiastically with every kiss I placed on her skin, from below her belly button and lower. The heady scent of her arousal swirling with the taste of her strawberry body lotion against my lips and tongue.

“Harry,” she pleaded and I growled between her legs.

I resisted going straight for her covered sex, Karrin would love me to, and fuck did I want to, but the anticipation from making her wait for it she’d love all the more. Besides, I had a little revenge to enact.

Karrin always forgot that I knew my scruff tickled her. Especially her sensitive inner thighs. And that it made her wetter than any waterfall when I rubbed my stubble against the soft skin.

I placed the first kiss in the middle of her inner thigh, my hands rolling over her hips to her ass. I squeezed her with both hands as I kissed and nibbled a small circle of her thigh.

Karrin’s reaction was immediate, she let out a toe curling moan. Her legs went to wrap around my head but I blocked them with my shoulders. I kissed a little further up, a tremble of need running through the muscle against my cheek. I scratched my stubble along the silky smooth skin, a giggly moan bubbling somewhere above me. My kisses, and the scratches and giggles, only stopping just as the soaked fabric covering her sex met my lips.

I ran my fingers under the soft fabric half over her ass, the heated curve of her welcoming my palms as I kneaded her, the shorts rubbing against my knuckles. An ass as hot as Karrin’s was never to be ignored.

“Please,” Karrin groaned above me and I nibbled where her leg met her sex. “Fuck Harry.”

“Not yet Officer,” I growled against her. I skipped over the fabric, dragging my lips over the taste of her and not kissing until I got to bare skin again. Another nibble and more mind-ending kisses back down her other thigh.

“Harry, please,” she begged and my cock throbbed under me. “Please.”

I kissed back up her thigh, sucking wet ones that made Karrin’s fingers in my hair clench hard and pull me closer to her slit. I resisted the pull, Karrin’s strength diminished by my still squeezing and rubbing hands.

Her whole body arched with need and I hovered my head above her sex and grinned up at her. Her dynamite blues eyes about ready to roll back in her head as she met the gaze. The cap still on her head, pulled down and her plush bottom lip caught in her teeth. Her chest swelling from this angle intoxicating as the smell of her arousal directly under my nose.

“Please what Officer?” I asked huskily. I pressed a kiss against where her clit would be and never broke eye contact as I lingered there. “What do you want?”

“Your tongue,” she said desperately. “Please Harry, I want you to eat me out with your tongue.”

I ran my tongue over her slit, tasting the mingled flavour of Karrin and the shorts and grinned. “You’re so hot.”

“ _Harry_!” Karrin pleaded. “Please!”

I chuckled and kissed up her lips and clit, relishing the breathy moans I was gifted until my teeth took the waistband of my obstacle to her and slowly pulled it down.

Karrin gasped and wriggled as my lips dragged down over sex, I might have taken my time when I reached her clit, and lifted her legs when needed. I dragged the all but ruined shorts to the lowest part of her inner thigh before kissing my way back up to her womanhood.

I ran my tongue over her naked slit and she screamed. It was like music. The best of symphonies couldn’t touch how beautiful Karrin sounded.

I licked along her lips in delicate little rolls. Her fingers leaving my hair to grip at the comforter beneath us, the only steady movement she was capable of, gripping up fists of bedding and rocking her hips against my face.

I left searing kisses up and down her lips between the licks, suckling on her clit eagerly every time I reached it and wiggling my tongue against it to rip more screams from her. My hands rubbing up the back of her thighs as I guided them up and away. I looped my arms around them and lifted her up so Karrin’s back was half off the bed.

“Oh my God!” Karrin hissed as I used the new angle to stare into her eyes, making sure she was looking straight at me when my tongue first teased into her. “Fuck!”

Her beautiful blues rolled back as I licked deep, fast and hungry. I buried my tongue into her, my nose rubbing at her clit as I licked back out over her inner walls in rolling waves. Karrin’s heat enveloping my chin as she suddenly tensed and the tell-tale spasms of another orgasm rode out over my tongue.

I ate up everything I could, savouring the sweet taste of her, swallowing her down and teasing her swollen lips through the last shakes of her overwhelmed body.

She shuddered as I placed a little kiss over her clit and sighed out my name. I lowered her body down, unwinding my arms from her and let her slowly come back to reality.

I ran my tongue over my lips and moaned lightly at the taste of her there. I could have that scent in my mouth all the time and never stop adoring it.

I rose until I knelt above her naked, but for the cap and thigh highs, body and my cock throbbed with need. Karrin gave me a longing smile and reached out to beckon me back in touching range.

I lifted her legs, the shorts bringing them up together and Karrin whined in anticipation as I edged closer to her exposed pussy. Her knees coming to rest against her chest as I tested her flexibility. A hungry roar in the back of my head reminded me that I had been right about the martial arts.

“Harry,” she gasped as my tip rubbed lightly up and down her slit. Her hand reaching down to rub herself and me in one eager motion. My head burned as it ran along her slick lips. “In.”

I kissed her calf through the tights and sighed hungrily. “Still my toy Officer?”

“Always,” Karrin answered immediately, meeting my eyes with the truth of it and bit her lip. “Play with me Harry.”

I had to close my eyes as my lips rested against her calf and I growled at her continued rubs and pleads.

“Roll over Karrin,” I said. Cos fuck the game now, I’d had the image I was about to make real in my head for over a decade. I was done playing.

Eagerness flashed in her eyes along with recognition and once I’d let her legs drop back to the bed, the blonde rolled onto her tummy and lifted her ass up to rub against my cock.

She rolled back against me, her legs still trapped by the shorts but I ripped them off and threw them to the floor as soon as I could. Her legs framed my knees on the bed as I crawled closer, her perfect ass teasing along my rigid cock. I brought my hand down on her rising ass, hard, making her gasp and wiggle into my following grip. I left finger marks with how hard I squeezed.

“Again,” she purred, fixing the cap on top of her tousled hair and stared back over her shoulder at me. Her ass circling my cock tantalisingly and I spanked her again, gripping both her cheeks after and pulling her against me. The groan it elicited from Karrin made me throb along her slit.

“Keep looking at me Officer,” I growled as I lined my cock against her eager folds.

“Fuck me Mr Dresden,” she said in the last full sentence she’d be managing for a while. Her dazzling eyes hypnotising me even as they slammed shut when my cock filled her.

For the second time that night I was enveloped in honeyed heat and I had to grip to her ass to stop from falling over her body at how _fucking_ good it felt to be in her.

We moaned wordlessly together, Karrin’s hand going to her mouth as she bit on her fingers, but when I started to pull back and thrusted into her in a steady rhythm her fingers fell from her mouth and balled up the comforter again.

She moaned out my name between curses and her hips slammed back into me with each thrust in I made. The familiar rhythm found quickly as my grip on her ass loosened and with each slap of her perfect ass against my stomach I relied on my instincts more.

I forced myself to keep my eyes open so I could drink in the image, the pleasure overloading my brain making it a mammoth task. But I needed to see Karrin in nothing but a patrolman’s cap and tights as I took her from behind.

This, this was the first fantasy I’d ever had of her, all the way back when I’d felt guilty for thinking that way about a work contact. I’d excused it away as the after effects of the adrenaline of fighting the troll together and her just being stunningly beautiful. But when the fantasy had persisted into our friendship and both my id and Lash had thrown it at me in dreams … the guilt had sky rocketed along with the longing for it. But now, in the middle of the fantasy … it was definitely worth all the fucking guilt and wait.

Karrin wasn’t having as much luck at keeping her eyes open though.

Her arms had given out from under her, her cheek pressed into the comforter and her slammed shut eyes almost shrouded by her splayed hair, her gorgeous mouth open as a steady slew of moans that made me twitch within her spilled out onto the bedding. Her hips still rocking back on me as the bed groaned along with us.

I ran my hand up her back, her open mouth stretching into a smile as my fingers wrapped lightly around her neck and she wiggled her hips playfully with the next few thrusts back on me.

She ground her ass down my stomach just when I was base deep inside of her and my eyes almost popped out of my skull.

My head reeled back. “Karrin!”

“Uh-huh,” she groaned, still throwing in wiggles. “So good.”

I grunted my agreement and the hand around the back of her neck slid down her shuddering back until it rolled over her side and made a teasing line to between her legs.

“Ungh,” she groaned, one of her hands finding mine and guiding it to her clit. I hadn’t needed the help but there was something about our hands both between her legs that made the whole thing so much hotter.

We teased her clit in fast rubs to match the growing speed of our hips and Karrin’s moans started to come out in sharp grunts.

The slap of skin on skin filled the air and my chest morphed to her back, I languished half-kisses over her shoulders and neck and Karrin’s other hand looped around to my hair in a truly amazing bit of contortion. She pushed the back of my head lower, bringing my weight down on top of her more and she groaned so loud it shook my bones.

It wasn’t long until the fluttering around my cock became so unbearable that my thrusting grew erratic and the sudden pressure shot from my base.

“Karrin, I’m gonna!” I warned but it only spurred Karrin’s hips back faster.

“In me,” she begged. “In me Harry!”

That washed away the last of my resolve and I emptied myself into her welcoming heat. The shuddering, instinctual rocking of my hips as I rode out the mind-numbing orgasm toppling Karrin over into her own climax.

We collapsed onto the bed , a messy heap groaning for each other and breathing hard.

I slipped out of her and rolled onto my back next to her and reached out for her. She slid in under my arm instantly, an arm going over my heaving chest and a leg wrapping around both of mine. Her own chest rising and falling in fascinating ways against me.

“That …”

“Mhmm,” Karrin agreed. She kissed my chest sloppily and grinned up against my skin. “Had that one in the tank for a while huh Harry?”

I laughed and kissed her forehead as she beamed sleepily at me. “How’d you know?”

Karrin nestled into my chest and pulled me in closer. “I wasn’t just turning you on with those “crimes”. If you hadn’t been to do with work you wouldn’t have had to wait so long to get me out of my uniform … well most of it.”

She winked at me and I laughed again as I gave her ass a playful squeeze. The advantage of long limbs and a short girlfriend.

Her eyes fluttered closed and she sighed against me, sleep coming for her quickly.

I shifted her up, she didn’t resist, just smiled happily, as I got us up the bed so my head was on the pillow. The cap she’d been wearing tumbling off the edge of the bed where we hadn’t realised it’d fallen off.

“Gonna sleep Karrin?” I mumbled as the sudden softness under my head, matching the softness of Karrin’s body on top of me, all but pushed me off a cliff into sleepiness.

“In a minute.” She shifted against me, lifting up to kiss me in a long, tender touch of her mouth, her tongue gentle as it slipped past my lips and she moaned when my tongue met it with equal sweetness. “Happy Birthday Harry.”

I smiled, snuggling into the bed with her and tucked her under my chin. “Thank you Karrin, best birthday ever.”

“Wait til you see next year,” she teased, her words slurring with tiredness. “Gonna blow your mind.”

I wanted to say something suggestive, I really did but honestly, I wasn’t going to top that.

So I just settled down and kissed her forehead. “I believe you, night Karrin. Love you.”

“Love you more,” she said but it sounded more like “Lurv u mar” as she buried her face in my neck and dropped off almost instantly.

I followed soon after, grinning like the lucky bastard I was.

Birthdays man, who knew they could be so perfect?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah. I know. 
> 
> Showers are that way. I'll see you next time, with something a little more ... safe for work xD.


	8. Crash and Burn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murph's little sister has an offer for Harry when they're all alone. Post Love Hurts, Pre Changes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full disclosure, I hate Lisa. And when I did one of these for Rick ... I knew I had to do one for Lisa. And ugh, if this wasn't cathartic.
> 
> Now, prepare for the salt folk.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been cornered under mistletoe by someone you really didn’t want to be. It’s awkward and social niceties normally force you into complying with the tradition even if you don’t want to.

I won’t stand here and pretend that as a man that it happens to me all that often. Women aren’t exactly lining up to smooch me under any circumstances.

Though I could think of a few women in the mad circles I walked in that would love to ensnare me in such a predicament for nefarious reasons. One particular woman who would delight in even the threat of her kiss and what she could do to me with it. Especially now I wasn’t under the protection of Susan’s love.

There is a reason I have never accepted an invitation to Chateau Raith, even though an invite to attend a Christmas Ball would appear every year. Without fail, it freaked me the hell out and I burned the little scented note immediately.

The invitation feeling all the more menacing after Lara’s … offer … last time we’d seen each other.

But luckily for me, Murphy’s little sister Lisa was no Lara Raith.

“Harry,” she purred suggestively as we all but bumped into each other. “I was so hoping I could catch you alone. We need to talk.”

“Uh huh,” I said. Because Lisa had never even gotten my name right before, let alone been glad to see me anywhere. “Well, can it wait? Your sister is probably wondering where I am.”

I went to move past her, but she moved to stop me and in the relatively tight confines of the upstairs landing … well it was either stop or knock the woman on her ass in her mother’s house. Chivalry may be dead but I still hold with the ideals.

“Karrie can wait.” Lisa put a hand on my chest and I raised an eyebrow at her. I stepped back from her hand and looked at her expectantly. She smiled at me, a pleased little gesture that I imagined was meant to be alluring. “It’s not like she hasn’t kept you waiting for years right?”

Okay, that stung a little. I was certain Lisa had no idea why me and Murph hadn’t gotten together. They weren’t close and ever since Lisa had shown up engaged to Murph’s ex-husband and been flippant as fuck about the whole thing … they may as well forget the other existed most of the time.

But the reasons Karrin and I hadn’t gotten together couldn’t be solely put on me and I would be lying if on the lonelier nights since Ana- Captain Luccio and me had broken up I hadn’t wished I’d tried harder to convince Karrin we worth a try. Especially after the whammy we’d been through recently.

I could still taste Karrin’s lips on mine.

I damn well wasn’t letting Karrin’s bitchy sister see it had hurt me though.

“Lady’s prerogative,” I said coolly. “Get to the point Lisa.”

“Direct,” she said approvingly, moving closer to me, a suggestive sway to her hip accentuating the curve of her hips, the jeans she wore hugging them tightly. Her perfume reached my nose when she got close enough that if my eyes went lower than her face, I could be accused of being indecent. The perfume was sweet and tangy, the kind of scent that belonged on your lips and tongue rather than your nose. “I like that about a man. So does Karrie, but she doesn’t follow up on what she likes. I do.”

I gave her a bored look, even when her fingers ran over my chest and shoulders. My eyes never leaving her face. “I’m sure your husband appreciates that.”

“He does,” she said without a dose of shame. “Do you know what else he likes?”

Lisa shifted again, every motion a desperate attempt to draw the eye lower. It wouldn’t have been so painstakingly obvious if I hadn’t had the very best of seductresses do the same thing … only much much better.

In comparison, Lisa was like a drunken high school girl approaching a college boy.

I tried not to roll my eyes, Lisa taking my silence to be some kind of curiosity and she glanced up at the beam above us and against my better judgement I followed her gaze. And I groaned in exasperation.

She couldn’t be serious.

Among the truly astonishing array of decorations, Murphy’s brothers had told me about how they’d spent all of the first weekend of December decking the literal halls of their mother’s house, ornaments and tinsel everywhere. Trees everywhere else and more than a few handfuls of holly and mistletoe.

Like the sprig dangling above my and Lisa’s heads.

She couldn’t possibly think I was going to kiss her. She really couldn’t. How arrogant could you be? How insultingly stupid did she think I was?

Rage bubbled in my stomach and when I was in the process of quelling it so I didn’t burn down Karrin’s childhood home … I realised something that helped me turn that raging inferno to a molten lava pit.

Lisa had always thought she was more womanly than her sister. That that was why she was better than her sister and could “hold onto a man” where Karrin had failed marriages. The fact that Karrin wasn’t a vapid little Barbie doll, but an impressive embodiment of everything just and right in the world, wasn’t relevant. Nor was that Rick specifically hadn’t been able to handle Karrin being better than him, Karrin’s fault.

Karrin had told me how Lisa had used her looks to ensnare men when she wanted something. Always had, even in high school. Murph had spared no detail on her sister’s escapades once she’d gotten a little bit of ale in her and they’d been arguing.

I had offered an ear when Karrin had needed it and I had gotten a really good idea of the ugly inside of Lisa.

She thought she was more attractive than her sister, better even, because she had longer hair, longer legs and bigger breasts. And if I wasn’t way off the mark, she was looking to prove that I was just one more thing that she could take away from Karrin with her supposed better attributes.

She was gonna be so sorely mistaken Rick would be applying Aloe Vera to her wounded pride until Easter when I was done.

She also apparently didn’t know the difference between an annoyed reaction to her and a welcoming one.

Lisa sashayed even closer, hells bells if she got any closer she’d be under my shirt.

“He likes the way I kiss,” she said flirtatiously. A saucy wink that made my skin crawl followed until Lisa’s hands were on my shoulders and rubbing them sensually. “Would you like a demonstration Harry?”

“Lisa,” I warned. I could feel the fury burning up from the lava pit and I really, really didn’t want to blow my top right now.

“Shh,” she whispered. Her mouth coming closer to mine as she reached up to me on her tiptoes. “Just a little taste Harry. Don’t you want to know why Rich is so much happier with me?”

It was a good thing I’d left my staff at home, the sigils would have burned the wood to cinders if I’d had it now.

“Besides, it’s not just Karrie who likes big, strong men. And while she might never kiss you …” Her hand cupped my cheek, her thumb scratching my stubble until her lips were a breath away from mine. “I would absolutely love to.”

“Lis-” I tried one last time.

“Just one Harry,” she whispered. Her eyes alight with promise and she smirked when my hands closed around her upper arms. “But if you kiss as good as I imagined … maybe I could be convinced to delve further.”

She inclined her head and I could taste her breath on my lips. Her arms wrapped around my neck and her fingers dove into my hair.

I let my arms wrap around her, the shiver caused by my hands running up from her sides to her shoulders reverberating down her arms to my neck. I inclined my head to mirror her and made a husky whisper of. “Maybe I’d like that too …”

“Mmm,” Lisa sighed, her smile sympathetic. She played with my hair, twirling it around her finger and tugging lightly. “Who could blame you, it must be so hard to be kept out in the cold Harry.”

“It is,” I murmured, letting my hands fall to the small of her back. “And it’s been a really long time since I was kissed.”

Lisa shook her head. “I can fix that. I don’t understand why Karrie hasn’t done it already, you’re all tall, dark and handsome Harry, who wouldn’t want to help warm you up?”

She smirked suggestively, the fingers that were playing with my hair trailing along my jaw.

“What about your husband?” I asked, mixing a bit of uncertainty into my tone. “Won’t he be mad if he finds us like this?”

“It’s just a little kiss Harry,” she admonished lightly. A brilliant smile spreading over her lips. My stomach rolled at the casual attitude to infidelity. “Besides, Rich of all people knows how cruel Karrie can be to handsome men she doesn’t deserve. And how much kinder I am.”

Her hand moved down between us, her body nearly as close to mine as her lips and I repressed a shudder as her hand sank lower.

“He wouldn’t hold it against you if you let me be kind to you,” she whispered. The miniscule gap between us shrinking rapidly. “And those lips of yours look so soft, please Harry? Sate a girl’s curiosity. We don’t have to tell Karrie or Rich, it can just be our little secret.”

I groaned, I had to hide the snarl, and leant in to meet her lips. “There’s just one problem left then …”

“What?” Lisa asked breathily, her eyes slowly closing in anticipation as he lips parted.

“If you were the last woman on Earth,” I whispered against her opening mouth. Then I gripped her upper arms tight enough to get her attention and wrenched her away from me until the air between us was colder than a Russian winter.

“I would still rather kiss dirt.”

Lisa’s head whipped back like I’d slapped her and she stared at me. “What?”

Colour bloomed in her cheeks as the shocked expression morphed into anger and … hurt.

Balls.

I steeled myself though, this woman was not some poor victim asking for my help, or an innocent hurt by a big nasty. This was Murph’s bitch of a little sister who’d just tried to put the moves on me in no small part to get a win over my best friend.

She could quite frankly, kiss my magical ass.

“Do you really think it only takes a fluttering of eyelashes and a come hither look to get what you want Lisa?” I asked coldly. Staring directly at her nose, I did _not_ want a Soulgaze with Murphy’s sister. “That I would bend over backwards for you, _you_ , because you came on to me in your mother’s house?”

“I-I-” Lisa stammered, the embarrassment and anger merging in her cheeks until she could rival the baubles on the nearest Christmas tree. “But you-”

I crossed my arms across my chest and frowned. “Am not a toy to be taken away from your sister to make you feel better about your own failings. I would never do anything to hurt Karrin, least of all kiss you because you threw yourself at me.”

Lisa just stared at me, her lips melding into a little trembling line but damn, the words weren’t going to stop coming now.

“Your sister is the most amazing woman I have ever had the privilege of knowing. She is my best friend and I would do literally anything for her. Because she deserves that kind of loyalty, and if you bothered to spend more than a few moments of thinking about everything she has sacrificed and faced while you were living your empty little life … maybe you’d be a little less proud of taking the men who can’t handle her being better than them.”

“Because what else have you really got? Looks fade, you won’t be young and beautiful forever and then what will you trade on? Bitchiness isn’t exactly in short supply.” I glared at her hard and swallowed a snarl.

Lisa had started to shrink on herself as I ranted at her. I’d feel bad but I could see the nasty little words she was preparing to throw at me building behind her glaring eyes.

So I decided to lay the last blow down and leave before she got the chance to make a scene.

I went to walk past her and ducked my head to her ear. She stilled and blue eyes so similar and yet so drastically different to Karrin’s stared up at me hatefully.

“And there is no way in hell you’re a better kisser than Karrin.” I put my lips so close to her ear I could almost taste it.

And then I left her standing there fuming impotently, letting the knowledge that she couldn’t take me from Murphy seep into her brain and hopefully before the tears I’d seen welling up in her eyes fell.

I might really, _really_ not like Lisa but she was still a woman and I don’t like making women cry. Call it a sexist chivalry thing but it bothers me to no end. Even when the woman deserves it.

I had managed to make it to the top of the stairs by the time I’d cleared away the guilt building in my chest and marshalled my face into a neutral expression. I’d had to really work on it though so that’s probably why I nearly collided with Karrin.

“Whoa Murph!” I said, my hands reaching out to grab her shoulders before they rammed into my chest. “Watch those tight corners huh? You’re at an angle to damage some sensitive areas at that speed.”

Murphy’s eyes were a little watery as she looked up at me, making them sparkle in the nearby candlelight from the set of tables across the hall. She ignored the joke though and that put me on edge. She didn’t ever let me get away with that sort of thing.

“Any excuse to get me near your crotch huh Dresden?” she said finally and I let go of a breath I hadn’t realised I was holding as Karrin smirked up at me. Though it had more warmth to it then when she normally shot down my short jokes.

The low light cast captivating shadows across her face, the mix of darkness and her dazzling eyes making my heart beat just a little faster. My eyes dipped to her lips briefly but I managed to stop myself from staring.

“I was just coming to look for you,” Karrin said stiffly. Her eyes shifting to my side and then back to me. “Thought you might have gotten lost finding the bathroom or something.”

“Nah,” I said with an easy smile. There was a tension sitting between us but it wasn’t uncomfortable somehow. It was familiar though, there were words begging to be said sat between us, pretty much like that had been ever since we’d chased down that Red Court vamp at the carnival. “I was just looking for your childhood bedroom, wanted to see what posters you had on the walls. Read your diary maybe.”

Karrin snorted and punched me in the arm. A little gentler than usual. Huh.

“Come on, Mother is breaking out some more eggnog, you don’t want to miss that.” She turned and I followed her down the steps.

I cast a look back over my shoulder at the sound of floorboards moving, but I didn’t see Lisa. Thank God for small mercies, I didn’t want Murphy’s brain to put two and two together over what me and Lisa both being upstairs alone meant.

We reached the bottom of the stairs quickly and Murphy froze.

“Hey,” I said, stopping myself from walking into her back. “Murph, you need to stop doing that.”

“Yeah, sorry,” she said distractedly, her gaze tracking up to the bannister than hung above the stairs and she smiled absently. “Harry?”

“Hm?” I asked.

She pointed up and I glanced where her finger led me, my cheeks burning instantly as I looked back down at a smirking Karrin.

“Do you guys just love mistletoe or something?” I grumbled, rubbing at my heated neck until I felt Karrin’s fingers pull on my sleeve. My shoulders dropping from the sudden motion and I found her lips on mine in a gentle kiss.

She cupped my cheek, stroking my stubble with her thumb and I groaned gently into her lips. Her mouth opened and mine followed suit, Karrin’s tongue slipped over my bottom lip and burned like whisky going down smooth.

My hand fell to the small of her back, pulling her closer instinctively and a tiny sigh patted against my lips as Murphy lifted up to kiss a little deeper. My heartbeat slamming in my ears and my skin singing from every touch she gifted me with.

Her fingers trailed up from my cheek to my hair, her head falling back with a little tremulous moan spurring my tongue to explore her mouth.

And then she pulled away. A wicked gleam in her eyes as she rubbed my cheek and gave me another quick little peck on the cheek.

“Merry Christmas Harry,” she said, beaming. Her hand resting on my chest for a moment, her nails scratching slightly sending pulses of desire down into my belly.

“Merry Christmas Karrin,” I repeated, a little out of breath. “Now, um, you said something about eggnog?”

Karrin grinned at me and nodded. “I did, you need a moment there?”

I decidedly didn’t take the bait as her eyes dipped lower, that wicked gleam shining through clearly. “No I’m good, come on.”

I walked past her in the direction of the living room, where I could hear the sound of conversation and cleared my throat, rubbing my hand through my hair and ignoring the giggle Murphy failed to catch with her hand.

This time when I walked away from a Murphy woman though … I had to readjust my jeans.

Karrin one, Lisa zero.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Think the last line says it all really. 
> 
> Karrin: 1 Lisa: 0. Harry: Picking his jaw up off the ground.


	9. It's A Glorious Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murph gets an eyeful when she collects Harry from his office. Post Blood Rites. Pre Dead Beat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *climbs on top of the tiny pile* I LIVE!!!!!
> 
> Also this is from the prompt 'Be my wife'. Making my way through them bad boys.

Harry grunted at the knocking on his office door, not opening his eyes and trying to ignore the pounding headache that was beating out a samba on the inside of his skull.

The door opened and the tell-tale sound of smart, sensible work shoes on carpet told him he was hopefully dealing with someone with a sense of decency. No one who came into his office with shoes of someone used to working on their feet a lot would begrudge him a bad mood.

He’d explain that his Cain-like tendencies towards his brother were reaching a fever pitch if he had to. Incubus could at least have the courtesy to hook up with his playmates somewhere other than the two room apartment he shared with his brother.

He knew he had to eat but Thomas could at least “eat out” some of the time.

He groaned at the unintentional innuendo and reflected that it hadn’t been _that_ long since he’d had any female attention. Just that when you saw your absurdly good-looking sex vampire of a brother hooking up with women you would crawl through glass naked for on the regular … and said women were normally thoroughly sexed looking and sometimes barely even clothed in _your_ bedroom … you got a bit parched so to speak.

There’d been this one redhead who Harry had bumped into when she was wrapped in his comforter and nothing else. She looked like she’d hopped straight off the cover of Male Fantasy Monthly, he’d been able to count the freckles on her shoulders when she’d blushed.

And the smile she’d given him. He’d been thinking about that smile for days after. And what she’d looked like bent over in the surprisingly tight fitting comforter.

Star and stones, he needed to get laid.

The person who had knocked on his door, closed it gently, God love them, and set something down on the desk before him. They didn’t say a word but his keen wizard’s senses told him they were amused. And probably female.

Men don’t swallow giggles after all.

“Whoever you are,” Harry said, still keeping his eyes closed as he slumped down into his decidedly uncomfortable office chair. He’d have to look into one of those fancy smancy desk chairs that belonged on the USS Enterprise. If for no other reason to save his spine from bending. “I’m not open for another couple hours, come back then and we’ll talk business.”

The woman snorted and he felt her move closer to him. There was the faint scent of strawberry body lotion and perfume on her skin. Which smelled familiar actually … he didn’t know many women who used strawberry perfume so it had to be …

“Thomas bring home another woman Harry?” Karrin Murphy’s voice gifted his ears. He groaned and opened one gimlet eye at her.

She stood on the other side of his desk, her amused smirk in clear attendance as she took in his admittedly ruffled appearance.

Harry hadn’t really had time to pick up a change of clothes to sleep in and while this wasn’t the first time he’d had to sleep at his office since Thomas had moved in … well he hadn’t quite got around to installing a camp bed or something. Add in the fact that he’d had to escape his apartment or get a front row seat to his brother’s midnight snack as it literally came through the door wrapped around the man.

Simply put, Harry had turned tail and run with little more than his duster, keys and gun. When he’d gotten to the office it had quickly become too warm to sleep in his clothes and so he’d opted for stripping down to his boxers and t-shirt and thrown his legs over the arm of his chair.

He’d normally try to neaten himself up a bit but this was Murph and … complicated feelings raising their heads lately or not … she’d seen more than her fair share of dishevelled men at the precinct. One more wouldn’t kill her.

“No, I just _love_ sleeping in my office instead of my bed.” Harry swung his legs around so he was sitting and yawned. He stretched his arms up until something went crack and he groaned in relief. He checked his watch and grimaced at the fuzzy face that he couldn’t quite make out. “What time is it?”

Raising a brow at him, Murphy tapped the coffee cup next to the brown paper bag with a finger and shook her head. “Breakfast time, eat up. I got a case I need you on.”

Harry took a hearty sniff and groaned as the heavenly smell of fresh coffee danced up his nostrils. He opened up the bag and the sounds that came out of him weren’t entirely human and definitely didn’t belong anywhere around impressionable minds. “Be my wife.”

“Sure, I’ll reserve the church and we’ll get right on it.” She rolled her eyes at him but smiled all the same. “Get dressed first though okay? You’ll cause a stir going anywhere like … that.”

There was the faintest trace of pink across her cheeks, though he didn’t know why. She’d seen him like this before, hell she’d spent enough time patching up some of his wounds that finding him like this should be no more awkward than if he’d been fully dressed.

Then he shifted in the chair and felt the glory of his morning strain against his boxers and it was his turn to blush. Stars and stones, he was going to _kill_ Thomas. Abel got off lightly in comparison to what he was going to do to his brother.

“Uh, yeah,” Harry said, decidedly not looking at the woman who was studying the coffee maker quite determinedly. He pulled himself towards the desk so he was covered and smiled weakly at her. “Give me a minute?”

“Don’t be such a wuss Harry,” Murphy said with a long-suffering sigh, dragging her eyes away from the coffee maker to frown at him. “I’ve been married twice remember? I’ve spent years being next to a man first thing in the morning, I know it’s just a thing that happens sometimes. Get dressed already, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

And he’d believe that when her cheeks stopped being pink and she actually looked at his face. A particularly Neanderthal-like hooting was going through his head at that little fact.

Hells bells, he didn’t know why Murphy’s reaction was making him so damn happy. Sure he’d caught himself staring at her more than he was comfortable admitting, but he was getting harder the longer she stood there.

Maybe those stupid conversations with Thomas about the two of them and their obvious feelings … no, no! He was not gonna let the sex obsessed vampire’s words burrow into his head.

It had just been a damn long time since Harry had gotten laid, doubled with the fact that he saw lots of very attractive, horny and satisfied women regularly underdressed and tripled by Karrin Murphy knocking all of them out of the park.

Any beautiful woman in this situation acting like Murph was would please him, it had nothing to do with her specifically. It was all a matter of circumstance. Gorgeous woman glancing at his morning erection was gonna lead to some metaphorical chest pumping.

But Karrin really, _really_ needed to stop glancing at where his lap would be under the table so he could think straight for five seconds.

Otherwise he was only going to keep failing to convince himself that it _wasn’t_ because it was her doing the glancing.

“Murph,” Harry said, his tone not entirely dissimilar to pleading for mercy. “C’mon, you’re killing me.”

Murphy rolled her eyes again but a smirk slid across her face as she gave him a coy look. “Think about it this way Harry, I’ll know whether you have your gun in your pocket from now on …”

“Murph …” he interrupted, his face burning. He instinctively balled around the desk and glare daggers at the woman who was now pointedly looking at where his groin would be.

“Because now I know _exactly_ what it’ll look like when you’re just happy to see me.” She finished off with a victorious grin that exploded into a belly laugh when Harry slammed his head into the top of his desk with a groan.

“Would you just wait outside for God’s sake?” Harry asked, tilting his head so his chin rested on the wood. His eyes imploring the blonde woman to leave. Little Harry was far too flattered by that last joke and Big Harry would never be able to stand up with Karrin in the room now.

Murphy winked at him playfully and snorted. “Five minutes, downstairs. Or I’m coming back up with a camera.”

She left with another wink while Harry tried to wrap his head around that comment and growled in frustration as his erection throbbed unhelpfully at the view of Karrin’s back walking away.

He waited for the door to shut before flopping back in his chair and blew out a heavy breath. His gaze lingering on the door, Harry ran a hand through his hair while mulling over a thought.

Had Murph swayed her hips as she walked away or did he just wish that into existence?

Did Thomas maybe, _maybe_ have a point?

Harry shook his head again to clear out that ridiculous thought and pinched the bridge of his nose with another steadying breath.

He really, _really_ needed to get laid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously guys, morning glory is goddamn infuriating.


	10. Mother Knows Best

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murphy has a monthly coffee morning with her mother. Cakes, coffee and motherly advice are always on the menu. Post Turn Coat, Pre Love Hurts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so, I got antsy and had to write some more.

“So dear,” Marion started as she settled down on one of the plush sofas of the roomy den of Castle Murphy. The affectionate name Murphy and her siblings have given the large house they’d been raised in.

She lifted the cup of decaf coffee, milk and no sugar, “it rots your teeth dear”, and peered at her eldest daughter over the rim with a slight smile that was meant to put you at ease. This wasn’t a lecture just a piece of motherly advice. Honest.

“How is Harry doing?” her voice sweeter than the little cakes on a plate, sat in the middle of the coffee table, daring you to not take one and enjoy the sinfully good sugar.

Karrin had turned down the cakes when offered and reminded her mother she was on a diet. Her stupid brain firing back at her in Harry’s voice almost like it was a reflex.

_Diet?! Murph have you seen you? Eat the damn cake. I don’t think a couple calories are gonna throw off your killer figure._

And she would never tell the giraffe of a man how little comments like that made her stomach flutter almost as much as the incredulous look on his face when he said them. Like her not thinking she was the crafted perfection he did offended him on a personal level.

Stupid, sweet man.

“He’s okay, grumpy and never knowing when to shut up.” Karrin smirked to herself. “He nearly got his teeth knocked out when we were at the gym and Randy was bragging about how much he could bench. He told Randy I could bench him. He swung at Harry for that.”

Her mother’s eyes widened and before the question could be asked Karrin interrupted. “Harry put him on the floor.”

“Randy’s the one whose hands wander isn’t he?” Marion asked with a frown. Karrin nodded, her mouth a line. “He got a little fresh once didn’t he?”

“Yes,” Karrin sipped her own coffee, two sweeteners despite her mother’s tuts. “Years ago Mother.”

Randy hadn’t done it again when he’d found himself face first in the floor, not the mat, the floor, with Karrin on his back damn near breaking his arm to prove a damn point.

He was still a colossal ass and if he wasn’t a cop he probably wouldn’t be allowed in the gym.

“Does Harry know about that?”

Karrin sipped more tea to cover the groan that trickled past her lips.

She’d mentioned Harry twice now. That was the final warning for what was coming.

The invite to their monthly coffee morning was the first one. Harry didn’t always get mentioned when she visited her mother but only when Karrin expertly steered the conversation away from even the region of tall, endearing men who needed to stop being so attractive when Karrin was meant to be ignoring her feelings.

The second one was the offer of cake. And the third was always when Harry was mentioned at least twice.

Karrin had been waiting for the third sign more or less the second she’d sat down on the couch. Her mother had kept her waiting longer than usual. Karrin had been here an hour, her mother had disappeared upstairs long enough for her to check her phone, notice the damn thing was playing up again and manage to answer a couple of texts from Rawlins and pointedly ignore an email from Internal Affairs.

But just as she thought she had dodged the conversation this time, a fresh coffee and a second plate of cakes had come out.

Two plates of cakes, damn, this wasn’t just a pointed conversation that was going to be all about Harry, it was going to be a damn interrogation.

If she didn’t know any better she’d think her mother didn’t know she was being obvious about it but … Well Marion Murphy was the widow of a cop, the mother of cops and a matriarch in an Irish Catholic family.

If she was being obvious, she knew you knew and didn’t care. Hell, it was probably meant to be a coded message that what she was going to say should be so blatantly clear to you she wouldn’t do it the disservice of being subtle about it.

“He doesn’t know about it no,” Karrin answered. She reached out for a cake. Fuck her diet, she was going to need the sugar after this one. “I don’t tell him everything Mother.”

She was a woman, a small woman, in a man’s job. If she told Harry every time she was on the receiving end of sexist bullshit the man would explode out of pure chivalrous hypocrisy.

“Are you sure?” Marion raised an eyebrow and took her own cake. “He doesn’t seem the type to go around goading people unless he knows they deserve it. He’s too much of a gentleman for that, don’t you think?”

If gentleman meant a smart mouthed idiot with outdated approaches to so called chivalry, yeah sure. But she’d learned not to say that to her mother. It got her a lecture on the difference between manners and actual sexism and that was a tiring argument that she really didn’t have the energy for today.

She’d had the dream where he’d knocked on her door in the middle of the night and taken her to bed last night. Again. It always left her breathless and wobbly the day after.

So she settled for a non-committal grunt and another cake. She’d just do a lot of sit ups later or something. Her mother had gotten her favourite cakes in, it would be rude not to eat them. And if she was going to sit through the coming interrogation she deserved them.

“Is he still seeing that Annabeth woman you were telling me about? His boss you said?”

“Anastasia,” Karrin corrected before she could stop herself. “No they broke up.”

Harry hadn’t told her much about it though, she didn’t know what to make of that. He’d seemed down lately but that was to be expected, even if the feelings they’d had for each other were real … when someone had gotten into your head and played, well she had first-hand experience with how much that could fuck you up.

If the bastard wasn’t dead already, Karrin would have taken great pleasure in putting a couple bullets in his head.

“Oh,” Marion said with all the weight of someone very pleased with what they’d just heard but trying to hide it to be sensitive. “Why if I can ask?”

“Why would I know?” Karrin asked, probably a little sharper than she should have. It was her mother’s fault, she was leading her to the inevitable question of why they weren’t dating again.

It had been the one upside of Harry dating someone else. For the entire time she hadn’t been getting asked why she wasn’t dating her best friend by her mother as well as said best friend’s brother.

The reprieve was only minor though. She was still keeping her mother up to date on Harry’s relationship. Something in all honesty, she’d really rather not do. It had been bad enough knowing Harry was with another woman, she didn’t need to rundown every element of the relationship with her mother.

It was even worse than dodging around her arrangement with Jared when she was listing the reasons why she couldn’t date Harry to her mother. Which she would never tell her about because _that_ conversation would be ten million times worse.

Thank God Thomas had had the good grace to shut up about her and Harry after he’d started dating Luccio.

Though he was probably going to start again soon. Hell, she had half expected a text about going for a drink to “catch up” the second Harry had told her he and Luccio had broken up.

Then again, given what little Harry had said about Thomas … maybe there was more of a reason why the vampire hadn’t been in touch. She hoped he was okay, but pressing Harry for information would only hurt him and that was the last thing she wanted to do.

So she’d lain off. Besides, every time she was around Harry lately she had to struggle to concentrate on the conversation they were having and not their conversation and kisses before he’d gone to the island.

 _Love you too,_ his voice echoed through her mind and she had to close her eyes to refocus her mind.

She could still taste his lips on hers, and it was somehow worse than that time he’d kissed her out of excitement before they’d gone to save Molly.

It was probably something to do with the conversation but despite the kisses being chaste and more punctuation to their words than passion filled lip locks … she still felt her skin tingle where his lips had been.

Damn him and his soft lips, which she couldn’t stop staring at. Damn her for starting the conversation just because she’d had to tell him he made her world less scary, and damn them both for not talking about their feelings out of fear for what it would do to them.

“Dear,” Marion said, placing her cup down on the coffee table and sighing. The sting of the unsaid words like a slap across the face. Because of course she knew what happened, who else would know if not her?

Because even though it was true Harry hadn’t said much, and she really didn’t want to pry, she did know how it had affected him. She saw it in the brief pained expressions when happy couples would pass them. And the way he leant into her touch at any opportunity.

Her wizard had tells even if he didn’t know it and much like how she could read her mother’s intentions, she knew Harry’s like clockwork.

And Harry was in quiet agony that was practically screaming at everyone he was around but nobody could seem to see. Except her.

God she just wanted to wrap herself around him and make it go away.

He’d be okay in time, she knew he would, but it was still fresh and if she could make the pain go away any faster … then all the better.

She felt so useless and cowardly. Her own feelings for him keeping her from comforting him when he needed it most. Because she was afraid of getting burned by a man who would sooner kill himself than cause even a flinch of pain.

A serious expression crossed her mother’s face. “Did she hurt him?”

_Yes. And it’s not even her fault._

“She didn’t cheat on him if that’s what you’re asking Mother, no.”

“No, I know that Karrie,” Marion said with a little smile. “You’d have killed her for that.”

She hated how her brain and heart roared in agreement.

“But he is hurting, isn’t he?” The smile slipped away to a very motherly frown. It would probably make Harry all kinds of awkward and flustered and it was almost worth subjecting herself to more of her mother’s insistence that they be a couple to watch the man squirm under motherly affection.

“Yeah,” Murphy said, sadness tainting her lips. “He is.”

Marion hummed disapprovingly. “Poor man,” she said softly. “You’ll look after him though, right Karrie?”

_Here it comes._

“He’s my best friend, of course I will.”

Marion frowned again and tutted. “We both know he’s more than just a best friend Karrie. Honestly the way you talk about him sometimes …”

“Mother,” Karrin breathed out. Her hands going to her hair like she wanted to yank it out of her skull. “Not now. He’s literally just broken up with her, am I supposed to throw myself at him as a rebound or something?”

“Of course not,” Marion said calmly, not even raising her voice an octave as she looked just over Karrin’s shoulder instead. An unreadable expression on her face. “But I know what you sound like when you’re jealous Karrin, I know what you sound like when you’re heartbroken and I _know_ what you sound like when you’re in love. You can lie to yourself dear, but you can’t lie to me. You love Harry, and it’s written all over your face whenever you even mention his name. You’d have to be blind not to notice.”

“Of course I love him!” Karrin snapped back, rising from her seat and blowing out an exaggerated breath of frustration. “Is that what you want to hear? I love him, I can’t stop loving him, I don’t want to stop loving him and I don’t think I could if I did. That terrifies me, he’s like oxygen and without him I don’t think I’d survive. And watching him in pain … he thinks I don’t notice but I do. How much it destroys him that he can’t help all the people he wants to help, he can’t fix all the things he wants to fix and he won’t let me take the pain away any more than I’ll let myself take it away. Because I could, I know I could. And he could take away all of mine. Hell, he does it by smiling at me sometimes. Each smile wipes away a nightmare, every hug banishes an insecurity and every kiss …”

She broke off, her voice had started to crack and she buried her face in her hands as she sunk into the sofa.

“All I want to do is take him home and make him know he’s loved and cared for and that I’m never going to leave him. But what if it doesn’t work out and we do lose each other? What are we meant to do then?” She felt the sting of tears building at the corners of her eyes. She blinked them away, dragging her face back up to look beseechingly at the frowning woman opposite her. “Tell me, tell me how I’m meant to survive losing him because I don’t even know if I’d want to.”

“Oh sweetheart,” Marion whispered, coming round the table to take her daughter’s hand with both of hers. “I think you had best start by turning around and talking to him.”

…

_WHAT?!_

She glowered betrayal at her mother but the unmistakable sound of a stuttering wizard trying his best to look for an exit drew her glare away. The bottom of her stomach tumble to her toes and keep going through the floor as she stared at him splayed against the wall with a tiny smile.

“Hiya Murph,” he tried lamely, a blush emblazoning his face that didn’t even hold a candle to the flame that burned at Murphy’s cheeks. “Fancy seeing you here?”

He looked like he wanted to bolt, his eyes going to every possible way out and then back to her still staring face. They were glistening though, unshed tears were definitely filling up his eyes, his voice breaking over each word he said.

“I just wanna say that I had no part in this,” he said quickly, waving his hands in front of his chest and pointing at Marion, pushing himself further against the wall like he was trying to melt through it. The fact that he probably could if he got too worked up not occurring to him more than likely. “Your mother just asked me to come round and get something down from her attic, said your brothers and Rick were too busy and well … this was really uncool Mrs Murphy.”

Her mother shrugged and patted Karrin’s hand gently. “Someone had to intervene Harry dear, and you were very sweet to come round and get the suitcases down for me.”

“You’re welcome? I think …” Harry didn’t take his eyes off Karrin.

Marion smiled and squeezed Karrin’s hand before raising herself back to her full height. “I think I’ll just go put them in my bedroom, you two talk. You can yell at me later Karrie.”

She was going to, until her vocal chords tore she expected but first …

“How long,” Karrin said once her mother was up the stairs. Harry hadn’t moved the entire time, like he was terrified she was going to strike if he did. “How long were you standing there?”

Harry took a deep breath and took a testing step towards her. When she didn’t take one back he covered the rest of the distance until he was stood close enough to her they could whisper.

“I can’t stop loving you either Karrin,” he murmured.

 _Oh God_ , kill her now.

“I – I,” she started and growled. “I’m going to kill her I swear to God.”

She looked up to see him watching her softly and her stomach fluttered, her fingers itching to wrap around the back of his neck. Her heart crunched around itself as she looked away from him. “Harry, we’ve had this conversation before … it can’t work. It’s too much to risk, I meant what I said. I can’t lose you.”

She couldn’t. Even if it meant never having him in the way she wanted him. Him just being in her life wasn’t enough but it would have to be. And that little fact killed her by inches every time she thought about it.

“I know, I couldn’t either,” he said gently. Fingers reached up hesitantly to cup her cheek. She leant into it and she felt him sag in relief. But he tensed again and the ache in her heart and gut that had been embedding itself paused. “But who says we’d lose each other?”

His hand guided her chin up so their eyes met, he held it dangerously close to when that pull would start and he smiled. Small, hopeful and gentle, like a prayer.

“Harry,” she groaned, leaning forwards to rest her forehead against his chest. She couldn’t look at his earnest face. She couldn’t stand to add to his pain and watch it happen in real time.

“No Karrin,” he said in the same tone. He eased her face away from his chest and knelt down to save his back. It almost made her smile when he covered the wince. “Who says?”

“We …”

“We were afraid, cautious. Too cautious,” he murmured, taking her hands in his and lifting them to his lips. “We talked about it in the hotel yeah, but we put distance between us, we were practical. I’m tired of being practical Karrin, I have seen way too many people lose the people they love to ignore how I feel about you because of fear. I’m stupid but I’m not that stupid. And it’s not just a matter of a knee jerk need for someone because I’m on the rebound, that’s not me and we both know that. That’s just another excuse we’re hiding behind. And I’m not gonna pretend I’m not absolutely terrified, hell feel my heartbeat.” He took her hand and pressed it against his chest, where his heart was doing a samba that seemed to reach through her hand and demand her heart match its pace.

“But I’m back out on that ledge we were on all those years ago Karrin.” He lifted her palm to his lips and kissed it slowly while looking her dead in the eyes again. It sent wonderfully hopeful shivers down her spine and they pooled in her belly. “Only this time I’m not getting down.”

Karrin chuckled hoarsely and squeezed his fingers. He smiled and her heart screamed. “You think you’re practical?”

He laughed and her soul joined her heart in the screaming. “Maybe not, but what do you say? Am I out on this ledge alone?”

She sighed gently and lifted their hands to her lips. She kissed each of his knuckles and nuzzled against his palms when he opened them for her. “No, you’ve never been alone there.”

“So?” he whispered into her temple as he placed a kiss that sparked all over her skin, making her eyes flutter closed. “Jump off the ledge with me Murph?”

He was being stupid, this was stupid, it wasn’t ever going to work and they would be left broken and without the one person who could help them put themselves back together. It would kill them in every sense of the word.

But what if? A traitorous little voice whispered. The same voice that whispered the “love you too” that reminded her of the kisses. Of the pain at not being with him, the voice that on her coldest of nights gave her Harry to warm her.

They would be so happy, it said. He’d make her so very happy, and he could give her those wonderful kisses as much as she wanted and never stop. She could kiss him any time she wanted too. And all the other things his stupid smart mouth made her want to do to him.

He could be _hers_. Finally.

She just had to jump with him.

“Murph, my knees are starting to hurt here … kinda need an answer …” he teased, stroking her cheek with his fingertip and smiled weakly at her. The first shred of doubt trickling into his face. “Unless you’re just preparing to brain me for being an idiot … then you stay silent while I make a run for it. Think I might just make it to my car before you kick my ass.”

To hell with it. Both feet first it was.

“Geronimo,” she whispered before pulling on his finger, the minimal effort enough to knock him off-balance, and wrapped her arms around his neck, her fingers meshing into his thick, dark hair and caught his breath on her tongue.

He groaned into the kiss as they collided and after a moment of shock his hands found the small of her back and cradled her head. Her tongue explored his mouth, pulling him closer into her until she felt his head tilt. Every fear and doubt melted under the heat of the kiss and she poured all of it into him. It washed over them like mist.

His tongue met hers, tasting her gently with a purr that made her shudder in delight. He tasted like coffee and sugar and absently she recognised the taste from the cakes her mother always bought. But it didn’t hold a candle to the sweetness of his own taste that filled her senses.

She moaned quietly as his hand dipped a little lower and pulled back from the kiss with a sigh, cradling his cheeks with her hands. His stubble scraped at her palms as she instinctively scratched at it. The tremble against her touch making it even harder to not take another taste of him.

“We’ll jump some more later,” Karrin said, catching her breath and swallowing a giggle as a thoroughly dazed Harry nodded dopily. “But first, we have to go kill my mother. Deal?”

He grinned and pecked her on the lips, sending fresh shivers down to her core at the swift intimacy of it. “I’ve got a shovel in the Beetle.”

“Good, now follow me, she’s probably hiding.” Karrin stood quickly and tugged him up after her by the hand. The one she was clinging to for dear life.

“Yes ma’am,” he chuckled and she dared not to glance back at him in case he saw the stupid grin splashed across her face.

She’d have to remember to thank her mother for interfering.

Once she’d murdered her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! AUs for the win.
> 
> Also I am a sucker for interfering friends and family of two stubborn morons to make them get together.


	11. Hot Gossip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Murphy are on a stakeout on a boiling hot day. Post Proven Guilty. Pre Small Favor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so goddamned hot in the UK at the mo and thinking about this has at least let me forget my country is trying to cook me to death. 
> 
> Anyway enjoy.

“Muuuuuurph,” Harry groaned as he lolled his head back in the nondescript, undercover car, which had A/C, electric windows and a digital radio for all your music needs. Perfect sort of vehicle to watch some magical perp who was hiding out in an abandoned warehouse down on the dockside.

Or at least it would if you didn’t have a bored, overheated wizard sitting in the car with you. He’d accidentally killed the majority of the electronics just by getting in the car. Murphy had glowered at him so hard he could feel it through her sunglasses.

“What Dresden?” she hissed, chugging on a cold bottle of water that looked like it had come from God himself with the droplets of water sliding wastefully down the plastic outside and onto Murphy’s lap.

“It’s hot!” he snarked back. Shooting the broken A/C a death glare that had sent many a Red Court vampire running home to its mommy. The broken electrics just sparked mutinously at him. “Tell me this creep isn’t going to take much longer to pop his head out of his hidey hole. If he takes much longer I’m either going to melt down this warehouse or melt down myself.”

“Like I told you last time you bitched,” Murph said, reclining back in the chair with a disgusted noise, the slick leather squelching from her bare shoulders where she’d had to strip down to her tank top and trousers in the hellish heat. “He’ll be leaving at seven, like the intelligence said, and someone’s coming to take over for us soon. We have to wait until then. If you’re so hot take off your shirt or something.”

Harry grumbled. “You’d like that. Me getting all shirtless and sweaty for you huh? I bet this whole stakeout plan was just an excuse to get me in a hot car until I stripped down to my underwear for you.”

Murphy gave him the side eye over her sunglasses, looking at his chest, the shirt clinging to him adding a rough definition to the muscles underneath, and snorted. “Please Dresden, if I wanted you in your underwear I’d only have to ask.”

Harry blushed and stuck his tongue out at her. “Would not.”

The blonde scoffed, smirking slightly and leant on the steering wheel to leer at him a little more. It was kinda hot if Harry was brutally honest. Though he suspected that had more to do with the heat messing with his brain and Murph’s clothes sticking to her in what polite men would call enjoyable fashions.

She smiled slowly, making a show of taking off the glasses and tucking them in the middle of the dipping collar. Drawing his eyes down to where sweat glistened skin became impolite in its niceness.  “I wouldn’t even have to say please.”

Their eyes met for a long second and then Harry looked back over to the warehouse with a muttered. “Smartass.”

Because damn it all, she really wouldn’t. She wouldn’t even have to ask him nicely.

“I learn from the best,” she said with a grin, turning back to face forward in her seat and blew out an exasperated breath. “Now stop being a baby, take off the damn shirt, you’ve got to be roasting.”

Harry grumbled and leant forwards, pulling the sweaty t-shirt up over his head and throwing it into the backseat with a grumble of discomfort. Which was why he only just caught the appreciative look Murphy gave his suddenly bare chest and swallowed a smirk.

“I think the perp would be over there Sergeant Murphy,” Harry pointed at the warehouse. “Not on my glistening chest. Thought you said you wouldn’t enjoy me shirtless?”

Murphy glanced at his face and then back to his chest with a shrug. Then she winked at him. “I never said I wouldn’t enjoy it.”

Harry’s blush ran from his toes, up his neck and disappeared into his hairline. “M-Murph!”

She laughed and returned to watching the warehouse, still smiling to herself. “I’m not the only one who would either. I hope Perkins is one of the people taking over for us at five. The look on her face will be priceless.”

He scrunched up his face and peered at Murphy. “Perkins, who’s that?”

“One of our newer rookies, tall for a woman, long black hair, leggy and killer smile … ringing any bells Mr Chauvinist?”

It did and there was a little bit of a pleased flutter in his stomach. He wouldn’t lie that his eyes had lingered just a little when she’d left the breakroom earlier that week. The way those pants had clung to her hips had to be a federal offence.

Hey he was a good man, not a blind man!

Harry decidedly ignored the knowing smirk on Murphy’s face and gave a non-committal shrug. “Why would her face be priceless though?”

Murph almost snapped her neck looking back at him and the look on her face was reminiscent of the Cheshire Cat. “You mean you don’t know?”

He didn’t like that expression, he really didn’t like that tone and he had a horrible feeling the blush from before was going to look like a dwindling flame in comparison to the volcano Murphy was about to force through him.

“Know what?” he asked, almost too afraid to be louder than a whisper but forcing it to normal speaking volumes on principle

Murph’s slasher smile softened and she gave his chest one last long look and chuckled. “Okay, so you know how guys do locker room talk about women they think are hot and what they’d do to them and so on?”

“Course,” Harry said with a frown, not looking at Murph’s face. “And girls do it too.”

Murph raised her eyebrows at him.

“Hey, don’t look so surprised, I am a keen observer of the human condition. Women talk about men just as much as men do about women. You guys are just a lot subtler about it.” He held up a hand in a placating manner. “You’re probably less objectifying about it though.”

Murphy smirked at him. “Not as much as you think probably, but yeah alright. So you know no one really grows out of it, and when you work in a job where your life can literally be on the line on a daily basis … you can get kind of blunt.”

“You been talking about me in the locker room Murph?” He waggled his eyebrows at her. “Hm, now I’ve got the image of you and a group of women in just towels, fresh out the shower. Give me a minute I want to savour – ow!”

He rubbed at his arm where Murph had pinched him.

“Don’t be a pig Dresden,” she said without any venom. “But let’s just say, when they don’t think I can hear them, you have come up in the showers more than a couple of times. Especially your height and whether you’ve got a big …” Murph glanced at his lap and winked. “Shoe size.”

Harry had been right about the volcano blush, he could have sworn he felt steam pouring out of his ears as he stared agog at Murphy. “Jesus Murph,” Harry hissed. “Stars and stones, how am I ever meant to walk into the precinct again?”

“Gets better Harry,” she said, leaning in with a conspiratorial wave of her hand. “C’mere.”

Harry leant in, doing his best to not let his eyes follow the beads of sweat travelling down her chest and under her tank top.

“They’ve got plenty of theories about our sex life.” Her tone was like honey and full of promises of things just as sweet. “They seem to be one hundred percent certain we’re rocking each other’s worlds on a nightly basis. And that we think we’re hiding it. They even think we’ve got it on in my old office.”

He went to pull away on reflex, ready to blush up a storm and change the subject right the hell now but Murph’s hand had creeped out to hold his thigh, and him, in place. Her fingers were very close to a very pleased part of him right now.

“Want to know how they think we get over the height difference?” She smirked sinfully and made a show of her eyes wandering all the way down to the tight area around his lap, squeezing his thigh possessively. She ran her tongue along his neck in a slow, small lick, planting a little kiss like a signature before keeping close to his neck.

He froze. Went rigid in more than one way and groaned lowly. “Karrin,” he murmured, his hand reaching up to guide her too close lips to his.

“Then you’re going to have to ask Perkins. She’s walking up right now,” Murph said sweetly and reclined away from him, languidly so his eyes had no choice but to run over her, and started to pack up her stuff from the car.

“You’re a massive tease Murph,” Harry growled, hurriedly reaching back for his t-shirt just in time for when Perkins and her partner Reyes, wandered over in weather appropriate clothing. He caught Reyes nudging Perkins in the ribs and both women gave him an appreciative wink as he pulled on his t-shirt.

He went to get out of the car and blushed scarlet as Murph pinched him on the ass.

“Wouldn’t you just love to know,” she said with a coy smirk and waved to the approaching women. “Maybe if you manage to not lose your cool around the women who ‘wish you’d slam me against the wall like he totally does Murphy’ you’ll find out just how much.”

The changeover took at least five minutes longer than it should have.

It took Harry that long to stand up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heh. Murphy is such a tease, I love it.
> 
> Also I've officially reached 10 stories in my collection!
> 
> But as this is number 11 and I didn't notice until now, I don't have a milestone celebration but I do have something in mind for the next milestone ... oh you guys are gonna love it.
> 
> Watch this space.


	12. Lab Work

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry gets a nice surprise when he's doing some late night staff maintenance. Post Skin Game

Harry would never admit it, especially where anyone could hear him, but sometimes he really missed Bob.

The crude, sex obsessed, know-it-all had been forever pestering Harry to let him out so he could go stalk around sorority houses, or trying to give Harry dating advice that would have been sketchy to anyone who wasn’t a caveman, and on the rare occasions Harry had had female company regularly and Bob knew about it, the demented little pervert had tried to give him sex advice as well.

And the things the skull would say about Molly were so inappropriate it made his skin crawl. However, despite his numerous flaws and lack of morality … Harry could never have asked for a better lab assistant.

Not to mention that it had cut down on his research on potion ingredients and the nitty gritty of enchanting his blasting rod and staff with sigils and runes exponentially.

Sure, he could do it alone, years of Bob snarkily correcting him and making jokes at his expense had probably made him even better at magic than he would have been without him. But there had been more than one ruined potion since Bob had been passed on to Butters. And the notion of attempting Little Chicago 2.0 without the skull was laughable.

So yes, sat in his new lab, in his new place, surrounded by the slowly building collection of ingredients and magical doodads, Harry would admit to himself that he missed Bob.

Because at least maybe if he was here the skull could monitor the spells he was weaving into his staff while Harry was in bed. Where Karrin was right now. Literally down the hall in his bedroom, dressed in nothing but one of his t-shirts.

He nearly slipped in his etching of the latest sigil remembering the delight she’d had when he’d told her about the dream he’d had at her place. She’d worn one of his t-shirts to bed regularly ever since, smirking knowingly at him every time she caught him picking his jaw off the ground.

Smiling to himself, and casting a wistful look at the shut door behind him, Harry sighed and returned to his etching, sweeping away the sawdust dismissively as it sprinkled onto the work surface.

Just another hour, then he could let the staff rest and go join her. Maybe wake her up for a little middle of the night fun. Neither of them had anywhere to be tomorrow after all. He had no cases and Karrin had no Paranet stuff to do either.

Images of his hands slinking under the covers to wrap around her waist and trail up under her shirt, Karrin biting her smiling lip the higher his fingers got, filled his brain and his hand slipped again. He hissed as the knife grazed his skin before sucking on his thumb, dropping his staff which hit the table with a heavy thud.

“Damn,” he whispered, pulling his thumb out of his mouth as he tasted the tell-tale copper of blood. It was a little cut, would probably stop bleeding on its own in a few minutes but he couldn’t be bleeding over the lab, blood and magic were not things you wanted to take lightly.

He covered his thumb with his other hand and span on his stool just in time for the door to swing open and reveal Karrin holding the little first aid kit he kept in the bathroom in one hand, and her other hand going through her bedhead hair.

“Are you okay?” She asked sleepily as she looked around the room for him. “I heard a bang.”

“I cut myself, it’s okay, just a Band-Aid and then I’ll be fine.” He padded over to her, taking the kit off her. “How did you know I’d need the first aid kit?”

Karrin stifled a yawn and then gave him a look that screamed “Really?” without having to say a word, making him blush sheepishly.

"Okay, stupid question,” he said quickly, placing the kit on a clear work table and trying to open the clasp without using his thumb. He fumbled it a bit until Karrin came up behind him, batting his hands away gently and popped open the kit. “Thanks.”

She hummed lightly, a note of fondness in the admonishment and shoved him back from the table. She pulled out a Band-Aid and an antiseptic wipe and then turned around, holding out her hand for his. “Thumb.”

He lay his big hand, palm up, in her smaller one and tried to hide the wince the slight sting of the wipe over the open cut. She arched an eyebrow at him and snorted when he looked away. She wrapped the Band-Aid around his thumb and released his hand. “We’re going to have to restock the Band-Aids weekly at this rate Harry, you need to be more careful.”

Harry shrugged and picked up a cloth, swiping at the small bloodstains on the floor, table and over the first aid kit. Even in his own home, it wasn’t good practice to leave his blood lying around, best to destroy it now.

Scooping up the cloth, he walked over to the small furnace in the corner of the lab and tossed it into the flames. He watched the material smoke and set alight before turning around to find Karrin inspecting the fresh carvings into his staff.

“So, you have a woman sleeping in your bed, wearing your clothes and in the middle of the night you get up to …” she smirked at him and gestured at the wooden staff. “Polish your staff?”

Harry’s face burned. “Har har, I was just fixing up the carvings. I would have been back in bed in an hour. Somewhere you should probably go back to.”

Karrin crossed her arms over her chest, causing interesting folds in the baggy t-shirt and tutted. “What if I want to watch you play with your staff? Could be kinda hot.”

If his face had been burning before it was now aflame. “How many more you gonna need to let this one go?”

She shrugged and propped herself against the work table, looking from him to the stool he’d been sitting on. “Don’t be such a baby Harry, finish on the staff and then we’ll go back to bed. I’ll keep you company. Besides, easier to help you fix your booboos when you hurt yourself. Again.”

“Smartass,” Harry grumbled, resting back on the stool and setting back to the carvings. He could feel Murphy’s eyes on him as he did. She approached behind him, pinching his back lightly before peering over his shoulder to watch him better. “You can go back to bed Karrin, I promise I won’t be much longer.”

She kissed his cheek gently, a pleasant flush of heat spreading from his cheek and down to his tummy, and nestled her head onto his shoulder. “No, I actually like watching you work on stuff like this, it’s interesting. What are you doing exactly?”

He smiled, enjoying the feel of her hands rubbing over his back and his shoulder gently, her touch easing the tension from the pain and letting him focus more on the task at hand. Even through his t-shirt it was soothing as hell.

“I need to clear out any damage or imperfections in the carvings from when I’m dealing with beasties or any backlash from spells.” He pointed at a rather damaged sigil he’d been working on recarving just before he’d dropped the staff. “That one came from when a hack warlock tried to smack me with a tire iron, remember?”

Karrin nodded, her chin massaging his shoulder as it moved, her hands going lower down his back and round to the front of his chest. “So you’ve got to clear it out otherwise it could affect your magic?”

“Yup,” Harry said lightly. “Any damage could mean the spell just doesn’t work or could blow up my face.”

“Or a building,” Karrin teased, her hands going down to his belly. Placing a soft kiss against his neck.

His hand shook slightly on the handle of the carving knife but he powered on. “Maybe. But good upkeep on any enchanted items is just a good thing anyway. It’s why I always made sure to clean my duster properly. Subpar enchantments can lead to subpar wizards.”

Her hand dipped lower still and a fluttering ran through his stomach until her fingers were at his waist. “So you need to make sure you maintain the wood?” she whispered into his ear, nibbling on his earlobe gently.

“Karrin,” Harry said softly, his hands stilling on the staff. “What are you-”

“Shh,” she whispered, her fingers trailing down over the boxers he’d worn to bed, coaxing his stiffening member to fullness with gentle strokes around it. “Focus on the staff, you wanted to work on it for another hour right?”

She pressed against him, the feel of her breasts against his back making him to strain against his boxers and he groaned. Karrin’s lips finding his neck and her fingers teasing along his shaft.

“The staff Harry,” she murmured and her other hand came to rub over him as well. A spreading wet patch at his cock’s tip telling her just how much he was enjoying himself.

Harry swallowed a groan, and moved his hands over where the sigil was and tried to focus on the task at hand.

But Karrin wasn’t relenting with her attentions, rubbing her palm over his tip and her fingers tickling his shaft. It was almost impossible to focus and if he tried to force himself he ran the risk of damaging the staff even further.

It just felt too good to have her hands all over him. And the feel of her breasts against his back made him want to forget about the staff altogether and take her on the worktable behind them.

Her hand tucked under his boxers, delicate fingers stroking unobstructed along his shaft and up to his tip, a finger circling over it. Her other hand lifting his shirt to rub over his abs, the light tickle of her touch enhancing the pleasure running through his body.

“Stars and stones,” he groaned out, placing the staff and knife down as gently as he could, failing miserably as Karrin’s fingers curled around him and pumped slowly. “Fuck.”

He caught her lips in a slow kiss, a soft moan trailing into her mouth as his tongue eked out to taste hers. Her hand still pumping him slowly, the feel of her hardening nipples grazing his back making him throb against her touch. She laughed breathily when their lips broke apart only to crash back together.

But still her fingers on him were slow, deliberate and delectably tortuous. She ran her entire palm over his tip and squeezed it lightly before wrapping her fingers around his shaft, and rubbed up and down with the slightest of squeezes when she reached his base.

“Murph,” he hissed against her lips, nibbling her lower lip and making her groan out lightly. “Should I expect this treatment when I sneak out of bed to work on my staff? Maybe I should do that more often.”

Karrin laughed and gave him a quick squeeze before kissing him as slowly as her fingers moved. She ran them up to his tip, stroking at it lovingly. “Maybe I should leave you here to finish what you were doing. I’m clearly distracting you,” she whispered back.

Her hands left him, his boxer elastic hitting him gently and Harry whined before he could stop himself. He reached out quickly to wrap his hands around her hips as he turned to face her on the stool.

He pulled her back towards him by her hips, Karrin’s eyes swimming with satisfaction and desire which sent him reeling. Like it always did when the most gorgeous woman he’d ever had the privilege of loving looked at him like _that_.

“Problem Harry?” she asked softly, her hands dipping back down to his length, massaging and squeezing him languidly through his underwear. Her lips meeting his in teasing kisses. “I thought you had to finish polishing you staff?”

Her face was so close he could watch her eyes flutter closed briefly when he ran his hands up her bare thighs, under the hem of his shirt and cupped her bare ass with both hands. He squeezed the whole wonderful thing and relished Karrin biting her bottom lip as she melted into a smile.

He throbbed in her hand as she leant in for a slow, eager kiss, tongues meeting and melding while he sat there squeezing her ass while her hands massaged him.

“I’ve got another magical thing to turn my talents to now Karrin,” he murmured when their lips broke apart, one of his hands running up her back, trailing his fingers up her spine and wrapping his palm around her side so his thumb brushed the curve of her breast.

“So I’m a thing now huh?” Karrin said, her tone attempting to sound outraged but with his thumb stroking the underside of her breast and the other hand kneading her ass, it came out like a strangled groan of delight. That and her hands on his cock were only getting faster.

“No,” Harry replied. He cupped her breast and massaged it just as he was her glorious ass and worried her nipple with his thumb. Karrin groaned and her eyes drowned in need that if he weren’t already rock hard would have made damn sure he was now. “But making you cum is.”

He pinched her nipple and she moaned, a shudder of delight running through her whole body and his hands and Karrin’s lips crashed against his hungrily.

“Fuck, I love when you talk like that,” she growled through his repeated pinching and groping. Her hands moved to match his roughness and it made him pant with need, a tickle along his shaft warning him he might finish soon if she kept it up. “If that damn stool wasn’t so high up, I’d be on my knees showing you.”

Harry blushed. Look he couldn’t help it okay? As much as he was working on the dirty talk and it could flow out of him as easily as his Flickum Bicus spell when he got going … being told by Karrin she wanted to give him a blowjob while her hands were on his cock was going to get him blushing. Especially when they were back under his boxers again.

“We could always go to the bedroom?” Harry offered, recovering quickly as he recaptured her lips with more needy kisses. Drinking up Karrin’s happy noises while he continued to play with her body.

She pulled away from his lips smiling and squeezed all of him into groaning stillness. “Or you could do me on the table like you’ve been thinking about since I started touching you.”

Harry’s mouth fell open and his girlfriend swallowed a giggle.

“How did you …” He started but Karrin interrupted him with a roll of her eyes and a saucy wink.

“You’re really not subtle Harry,” she whispered as she pressed herself up against him and kissed along his jaw. “You’ve been glancing at the thing over and over.”

“Never heard you complaining about my lack of subtlety when it comes to this Karrin,” Harry grumbled, his eyes fluttering closed as her hands went to work on him again. He remembered he had hands too a moment later and returned them to their fondling of her ass and breast.

“Mmm,” Karrin moaned when he flicked her nipple back and forth with his thumb and lifted him up from the stool by tugging at his member. “Stop grousing, you have a table to fuck me on.”

He lost his grip on her ass, savouring the feel of her skin under his touch as their height difference led his hand further up her back, freeing himself from the t-shirt out of necessity rather than want. The hand on her breast struggled less though, his fingers still playing tantalisingly with Karrin’s hard nipple, the blonde woman making happy noises at the ministrations of his long fingers.

It kept her distracted, which was good, because while Karrin had been right about him glancing over at the table repeatedly, she hadn’t been entirely right about what he’d been thinking about.

Sure, he was definitely thinking about fucking her on the table, that was obvious and he wasn’t going to pretend a world class detective like Karrin wouldn’t pick up on that train of thought instantly. She didn’t know he was wondering if the table was low enough so he could just lean her over it, chest first and tease her before fucking her into next week though.

Keeping his hands busy, playing with her breasts and nipples as she continued to be tortuously slow with her teasing of his cock, Harry allowed himself to be led to the table, Karrin taking little steps back as she nestled her face into his chest and panted softly, crushing their hands between each other slightly but neither seemed to care.

Karrin walked right back into the table and one of her hands left him to feel around on the surface of it. “Help me up on the table Harry,” she said with a smirk, pulling down on his t-shirt to make him dip his head in for a slow, lavish kiss, the kind that sent sparks down your tongue and filled your senses with honey at the delighted moan that trickled down the back of your throat. “Time to put that polished wood to work.”

Harry snorted and held the next kiss with his own burning need, eliciting another moan from his girlfriend, and grinned as he noticed that yes, he could do exactly what he wanted to Karrin on this table. Her feet wouldn’t reach the floor though, so he couldn’t literally lean her over it, but he could do everything else.

Dipping down, out of her reach sadly but she made up for it by kissing any inch of him she could, along his jaw, neck, cheeks and running her hands over his chest instead, Harry tucked his palms against the back of Karrin’s powerful thighs and lifted her bodily up so her ass was sat on the edge of the table.

She gasped at the cool metal against where her skin was bare and giggled.

He just drank in the image of Karrin, perched on one of his lab tables, wearing one of his t-shirts that was riding up to reveal her bare, spread legs, and her bedhead smiling at him like there was nothing else in the world that could make her as happy as he could.

He almost wanted to open his Sight just to save the moment forever. But that would get in the way of what the sinful glint in Karrin’s eyes told him was in store for him now she was up on a level height.

Karrin beckoned him forward by curling her finger and he moved between her legs silently, their hands running over each other as their lips met sweetly and delved deeper. His hands found the back of her neck and the small of her back, massaging both areas lovingly and guiding satisfied sounds into his mouth via Karrin’s eager tongue. Her own hands starting around his neck and up into his hair, scratching at his scalp and sending shivers through his head and down his spine to end in his stomach, her legs wrapping around to pull him close.

His erection rubbed against her centre through their clothes, Karrin’s groan as they grinded needy, in the way that any man anywhere loved to hear from his woman.

She made quick work of his clothes, the t-shirt he’d been wearing lifted up over his head and discarded somewhere with a perfunctory throw, and his boxers tugged down by her heels until he literally popped out and they pooled to his ankles.

He stepped out of them, his now free cock rubbing against Karrin’s covered stomach and thighs as he moved, her hips rolling to guide him back to her centre with happy, eager sighs before their lips met again in a steamier embrace.

“Harry,” she murmured breathily against his lips. She started to pull him down on top of her, lowering herself onto the table best she could. But Harry untangled her hands from his neck and guided her down onto the surface alone, leaving her whole body lain out before him, his t-shirt doing little to hide her excitement at her new angle.

“Harry,” she groaned impatiently. “I want … mmm.”

“Shh,” Harry interrupted, silencing her by grinding against her slowly while his hand pulled the hem of the shirt up to rest just under her breasts, revealing her from her taut ab muscles and kissable smooth skin down to her glistening sex, blonde pubic hair damp from her arousal, and ran his big palm up and under until he was cupping her breast and immediately started to massage and knead it under the fabric. “I know what you want, but you had your fun.”

He ran his finger over her stiff nipple as their eyes met, lust crackling like lightning between them at each hitched breath Karrin took, and he pinched it before whispering just loud enough for her to hear. “Now it’s my turn.”

She groaned, writhing on the table, her thighs rubbing against his. The shivers in response to the cold of the table only intensifying the sensation of her bare skin on his. “You’re getting better at the dirty talk,” she giggled, her hand reaching down to stroke his tip lightly, panting as his shaft rubbed up and down her lips.

“Hands to yourself Miss Murphy,” he purred. He pulled her hand away from his tip, ignoring the glorious whine that came from his girlfriend, and lay her hand where her lifted shirt was bunched by his wrist. “Or I’ll make you beg.”

“Don’t make promises, oh God, you can’t keep Dresden,” Karrin moaned out, her eyes fluttering closed as his hand left her wrist and slender fingers ran down her stomach, ticklish quick and his thumb started to circle her clit. Her hips moving in rhythm with his slow strokes. “Harry,” she hissed.

He groaned in kind as her lips massaged his shaft, rubbing against his cock amazingly. They moved in a slow tandem, he rubbed at her clit and rocked his hips forward so her wetness could coat his manhood while Karrin rolled in the direction he led her. Her body arching up from the table, the coldness of it quickly leaving the more she moved. Harry struggled to keep his eyes open against the sheer overwhelming pleasure but he managed it. He wanted to embed this image into his memory. Along with all the other ones of them like this.

His eyes ran over the supple and toned form of Karrin, sweat glistening on her skin from exertion and pleasantly tanned from the summer they were just coming to the tail end of. He could see her hard nipples through the t-shirt, though the bunching just under her breasts was something he could do without.

He had spent so many restless nights dreaming about Karrin and the things he’d do to her, he wasn’t going to deny himself the rightful glory of being able to see her naked now she was his. But a fiery part of him refused to strip her.

It was always hotter when she did it herself.

Karrin’s eyes opened, her head pausing in its rolling as ecstasy shot through her from her core to her brain and she nearly knocked him sideways with the need in her stare.

She followed his eyes to her chest and smirked, swallowing a moan when he pinched her clit on instinct and moved her hands to the hem of the shirt covering her last bit of modesty. She moved her fingers slowly, slipping them under the fabric and rubbing against the underside of her breasts.

And there they stayed as she nibbled her lip and rolled her hips with his touch, panting louder and louder as he sped up, pushing her closer and closer to her climax. Because if she wanted to be a tease about what she clearly knew he wanted … well she wasn’t the only one who could play dirty.

“Lift the shirt Karrin,” he purred, rubbing up and down her clit in deliberately slow strokes. A tight little distance that made her hips buck as she moaned. “I wanna see all of you.”

She whined as his touch persisted, arching up against his fingers greedily. “Or what?” She challenged him, her half-lidded eyes calling his bluff even as she stood on the edge of desperation. “You got nothing Dresden. Make me show you.”

He smirked, there was something about her moaning through her tough talk that just made him quiver. It made him want to take her right then and there, screw all the power play stuff and just give them both what they wanted. It probably didn’t help that Karrin was still rolling her hips against his touch and making his cock pulse against her lips.

But he just couldn’t let her be the only one who got to play. He wanted to make his formidable woman give in just like she had him.

So he ran his fingers down her clit and lips to fresh needy moans, and gripped his rock hard cock. Karrin’s eyes opened wide for a split second as she realised just what he was about to do.

“Wait! That’s chea- ohmygod, mmmmmmm,” Karrin said quickly before pleasure overrode her, as his tip rubbed up and down her soaking sex. Tortuously slow so pressure danced over his mushroom head but by the way Karrin had dropped onto the table, she felt even better than he did.

Her hand darted down to touch him, to force him into her but he was too quick for her lust-ridden reflexes and clutched her wrist and held her hand at her stomach. “No Karrin.”

“Fuck,” she gasped, his strokes making her body arch up each time he brushed over her clit. Karrin’s hand went to her hair, clutching at it as her mouth stayed open in a long o of utter delight. She tried to urge him faster by bucking her hips against him but she couldn’t keep a pattern.

He thanked whatever stars were on his side when he learned just how much Karrin _loved_ feeling his cock rub up and down her pussy and clit. It drove the badass ex-cop into a moaning mess quicker than anything else he could do to her.

And he’d checked. Thoroughly. What he’d do if she still tried to play it tough was the only thing that came close to driving her this wild.

Karrin groaned loudly, his strokes focusing over her throbbing clit as her desire rebounded around the lab. Her fingers went to the t-shirt still bunched under her bust and went to pull the t-shirt up before catching herself and glaring at him.

The fact that she was still moaning melting the ice aimed at him to boiling need. Which was really not helping him not burst before he even got inside her.

“Dirty trick,” she murmured.

“You said make you,” Harry whispered as he leant down to kiss her slowly. She wrapped her arms around his head and almost pulled him right down on top of her before letting him go. “Do I need to keep making you?”

“Are my girls out yet?” She purred, nipping his chin before he pulled back up.

Harry laughed and bit down on a moan, Karrin having taken his momentary distraction to grind her pussy all over his cock. He glared at her playfully and she stuck her tongue out at him, her eyes closing serenely when his strokes were back in his control. Though she did roll her hips a couple times with a face splitting smirk.

Well that answered his question better than her teasing.

Good, he loved doing this to her.

“I warned you Karrin,” he said, bringing his cock to rest against her clit before pulling it back and slapping her clit with his shaft in three quick smacks.

“Oh fuck!” Karrin hissed, her body writhing in ecstasy as he kept smacking her clit with his shaft, rubbing his tip up and down her sex after each third smack. “ _Harry_!”

He revelled in the need pouring from Karrin’s tongue and smacked her clit harder, making her grunt in a primal and hot as fuck way, her fingers running up her stomach to all but rip the t-shirt away from her breasts.

Grabbing one roughly, squeezing and kneading her like his life depended on it, he kept smacking her clit and pussy with his dick. Karrin’s moans were wordless and broken with grunts of want as he kept up the adored abuse of her womanhood.

But the game was up, he couldn’t take the rough play anymore. He wouldn’t last and stars and stones did he need the release Karrin had built him to and never given earlier.

Her hand fell over the one on her breast and she met his gaze. The _please_ screaming from her even though her mouth was lost to continuous moans.

He smacked her clit one more time, her head shooting back at the fresh pleasure and when he rubbed his tip along her sex, he slipped into her deep and Karrin moaned so loud he wouldn’t be surprised if the neighbours heard.

The grip on his hand tightened and Karrin panted before her hips started to rock back and forth on him. His thrusting to match it instinctive. Her legs wrapped around him and kept him close.

But she was too lost to how good she felt to resist him unwinding them from his hips and lifting them up, letting him go deeper and deeper into her pulsing heat. Her walls beckoning him in until he was to his base and Karrin screamed passionately.

Her fingers clamoured to find something to cling to as he filled her deep and slow over and over again, his name and curses dripping from her mouth the entire time. In the end she gave up on finding something to grab and just rocked her hips in time with his thrusts.

Karrin was lost to the pleasure of him and her breathing pitched as her climax rolled over her, wanton moans cascading over her chin and wriggling all the way down her spine to her core.

She shuddered over his dick, the intensity of it nearly finishing Harry off if not for his iron determination to finish on one exact image that he’d been clinging to ever since she started playing with him.

His girlfriend whined limply as he slipped out of her. She knew he hadn’t finished but she couldn’t find her voice. Something that made Harry tremble with pride. He gave her legs a gentle caress before pushing them to the side. His hands ran up her legs to her hips, guiding her to turn her body over.

Karrin murmured her approval as she let him guide her onto her front, a breathy giggle at the sudden cold on her bare stomach and chest. Her legs dangled off the table, toes just grazing the floor until Harry pulled her back lovingly, the soles of her feet just touching the floor now.

He stroked her hips tenderly and without a word slipped back into her, greeted with still sensitive walls eager to have him back. Karrin rocked her hips back onto him with a happy sigh and her palms pressed down onto the surface of the table.

Starting off slowly, Harry growled his delight at the image of Karrin bent over the table, massaging her hips and ass to a chorus of pleased pants, his thrusts gaining traction in time with the back shots of Karrin’s hips.

The familiar throb and tickle of pressure, unstoppably building along his shaft, warned him he didn’t have long to savour the position but he didn’t care. It felt so damn good and each rub of his tip inside her was greeted with a shattering moan.

“Harry,” she moaned, her pussy squeezing around him much quicker than before, her next orgasm almost racing to join the first. Her rocking sped up, the table creaking as he hurried to match her. She tried to force her chest off the table but her arms couldn’t support her weight, she shuddered down onto the table again, her hand going through her hair as she panted heavily. “Oh God, _more_.”

That was it, any and all resolve was gone as Harry slammed into her, again and again, daring his orgasm to come before he was ready for it. Before her second one pushed him into ecstasy that would make his knees give out and pull them down into oblivion together.

It took his challenge and just as Karrin’s hand reached round to grab his hand on her hip, the first quiver of his release throbbed his entire cock and he emptied himself into her fluttering centre.

“Karrin!” he groaned, riding out the release by pumping into her as she replied in kind, her flurry of moans only coming to a stop when they both collapsed into the table again.

They lay there in a pile, breaths coming out shakily and giggly. He kissed all over her shoulder and neck messily, Karrin sighing her approval and wriggling beneath him. He had to stop, the pleasure over his spent self was mind-numbing in its intensity.

He kissed her cheek and Karrin smiled giddily.

“I think you should work in your lab at night more,” she whispered with a laugh. Her hand coming to push her hair out of her face, sweat darkening it at the tips a little as she leaned in to capture his lips in a quick kiss.

“I’ll consider it,” Harry whispered, nuzzling her neck. The sweet scent of her flooding his senses. “But only if you’ll be my lab partner.”

She snorted and wriggled with him still in her once again.

“You’re such a dork Dresden,” she sighed. “You’re lucky I find that so goddamn attractive.”

Damn right he was.

He kissed her neck and ran his hands under her to cup her breasts.

“Up for a field experiment?” he whispered into her ear before nibbling it. “In a place with softer surfaces?”

“Biggest dork ever,” she murmured pleasantly, lifting herself off the table. He slipped out of her with a delightful shiver for them both and she leant in to kiss his chest. She gave his cock a playful stroke and inclined her head towards the door. “Lead on professor.”

Harry grinned and pulled Karrin out of the lab by her hand.

He was definitely doing more night time lab work from now.


End file.
